Physics Questions I Can't Quite Wrap Up

1) According to relativity, matter cannot travel at the speed of light -- so the entire question is invalidated.

2) Ok, so instead let's imagine that your spaceship is traveling at 0.999c (almost the speed of light). Also pretty ridiculous, but let's just go with it...so could you SEE the light from your highbeams? Yes you could, and it appears to be traveling at the speed of c.

2b) Could your friend who is next to you traveling at the speed of 0.999c as well see the light from your highbeams? Your friend is in the same frame of reference as you, so they see the exact thing as you. The light is always traveling at the speed of light FASTER than you from your perspective.

Now I will extend the question with part C that you did not ask: What if a 3rd friend was standing stationary with respect to you, and he saw the two of you fly by. What would HE see?

Well, according to this guy, he says that the speed of you + your headlights = c.

This does get deeeep

The speed of light is also related to our definitions of time. This also is not the same everywhere For instance you can say one second is the interval required for light to travel 186,000 miles. This is obviously not true everywhere. Possibly not true anywhere.

"c" is a defined "constant". This is not the same as saying the speed of light is constant. For instance I could define the temperature of boiling water as a constant. Obviously it is not the same in every possible frame of reference. Understand this and it may help.

What happens to an observer not in our frame of reference is that the light is red or blue "shifted".

This is another manifestation of the "Doppler Effect".

If you Google "red shift", "Doppler Effect", Black Hole, or "prism" you can easily get more confused

The whole relationship between time, light, and the various frames of references has kept theologists, physicists, and philosophers out of other meanesses for quite a while Still is

I'd say in a relativistic environnment its a No and No (if you're paths are parallel). To see the light it has to radiate, hit something and bounce back to you. Given the speeds involved by the time its done that you've long gone so it would all be dark to you and the same goes for your friend.

Draw any right angle triangle, the hypotenuse is longer than the other base. Light simply can't reach the target to be observed.

The only exception to this would be if your ship has mass (or energy) and you do actually manage to approach lighspeed very, very very closely. This would mean that you'd be gaining in mass and actually generating an energy density around you that would eventually warp spacetime enough to close it (black hole forming) so you leave the physics of relativity (once your energy density goes North of 10^35 netwons per cubic cm) or at individual particle energies of above 10 ^19 GeV and enter the realm of quantum gravity controlling the forces and spacetime in your vacinity.

Trouble is an engine that powerful would already have a power source so great it would already be forming a black hole around it.