SPEED LIMIT 186,000 miles per second

Call me crazy, but I like to think about things that make your head spin. I can remember when I was younger my father telling me that if you park your car north to south that it is longer that if you parked it east to west. But, do not bother to measure this, because the device you use to measure the length of your car will be affected the same. Makes you think.

I have been reading about Albert Einstein and many of his contributions to science. I have read a few books on his special and general theory of relativity and they are all a little bit hard to understand. One was written by Einstein specifically for those with lesser mathematical abilities. Well, even that was a little confusing. I have found that if you read a little on these theories in physics, astronomy, and physical science texts first, it become a little easier to understand. Einstein made great contributions to the understanding of light. Growing up I always wondered if you were traveling at the speed of light and you had a flashlight in your hand and turned it on, would the beam of light proceed out at twice the speed of light? I always thought that this would be the case. After all, if you are driving in your car at a steady rate of 40 mph and threw a ball out of the car forward at 40 mph the ball would travel at 80 mph relative to the ground. After reading Einsteins work on relativity he has proven that the speed of light is the cosmic speed limit. Nothing can travel faster than light. So, if I travel at the speed of light and turn my flashlight on, my light will not travel twice the speed of light. So, the speed limit is 186,282.397 miles per second or 983,571,056.4 feet per second. Pretty fast huh!

Last night I began to think about light and light speed, as I think we all often do at night. I took my thoughts on the flashlight a little further. What if I were traveling at the speed of light, as you can see I often think about doing this, and I had a little hand mirror with me. While traveling at the speed of light I place the mirror in front of me to view my reflection. Will I see my reflection in the mirror? Think about this for a moment. ?????????????? What to we view when we look at something or someone? We see the reflection of light off of the object we are viewing. So, the answer would be no. The light would not be reflected from your face toward the mirror in front of you because of this cosmic speed limit. Think About it!