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Originally Posted by Stompy
I'm trying to wrap my mind around this and make sense of it:
An observer chasing a beam of light will measure it moving away from him at the same speed as a stationary observer.
Ok, so if someone was throwing a ball at you 20 feet per second and you run away 8 feet per second, the ball is then coming at you 12 feet per second. Therefore, if you ran 20 feet per second, the ball would appear motionless to you (briefly).
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Right so far.
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Let's say a beam of light is shining in a straight line along and infinite path, and you are traveling the speed of light on a parallel path right next to it, that light will still appear to be going the speed of light... how is this possible?
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How is this possible? It's not.
"and you are traveling the speed of light on a parallel path right next to it": you
cannot travel the speed of light.
Trying to explain this very counter-intuitive theory in a single post on an internet forum would be largely pointless, so instead I will point you to an excellent book which you may be interested in;
Six Not So Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman. It is easy to read and requires no prior knowledge. It is also quite short (maybe 150 pages).
Also it is the type of book which will give you a chance to actually
understand the theory, rather than just telling you
about it (I have found that many science popularisations are guilty of this).