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     Albert Einstein, a famous German physicist, was the person who made up the theory of relativity. The theory of relativity states that light is the fastest thing, and no matter or anything else can travel faster than the speed of light, which travels at about 299 792 kilometres per second. Albert Einstein thought that if you traveled faster than light, you would go back in time.

A picture of Einstein, from http://users.pandora.be/worldhistory/milestones_frame.html?pages/einstein.htm
Einstein was a famous German physicist who made up the theory of relativity.


     Is breaking the speed of light sound impossible? Well, it might be. However, lets say there is a car travelling at 5 meters per second in a room that is infinite in space and has no air or atmosphere (vacuumed). There are headlights attached on the front of the car, and the headlights are so strong that they can produce light strong enough to travel an infinite amount of distance before the light fades away. Now, the car is going at 5 meters per second, or 18 kilometres an hour, and suddenly it turned on the headlights. The light coming out of the headlights will travel 299 792 kilometres a hour away from the headlights. However, the headlights are moving too, since it is attached to car, which is travelling at 5 meters per second. Therefore, the light coming from the headlights should be travelling at 299 792.005 kilometres instead of 299 792 kilometres per hour. This experiment is impossible, because we can never get a room this large or headlights on a car so strong that the light from it can keep going and never fade out. However, we can use common sense and mathematics to predict what will happen.

     To see the write up of this imaginative experiment, click here.