Just a quick question about radio waves. I presume radio waves travel at or close to the speed of light. How come if you drive towards a radio transmission you don't get an increased pitch. I guess radio waves are a form of light we can't see so it behaves like light. As a wave and particle so nothing goes faster than the speed of light. As in a train with headlights moving at speed can't emit light at 3×10^8 m/s plus train speed. I might have answered my own question a bit but it is a little confusing. Also has anyone managed to capture footage of radio waves moving like that 'trillion fps' camera but for radio waves?
Radio waves are invisible to the naked eye, so you would not be able to see them even with a trillion FPS camera. As for the doppler effect, with the difference in speed being so large, the doppler effect is negligble.
Yes, the same reason headlights coming towards you or going away from you aren't noticeably blue or redshifted. The speed of light is so great that any movement (even extremely rapid) is utterly negligible to the viewer (or listener)
radiowaves are too long in wavelength compared to the visible light spectrum. i also doubt the pitch would changea all as the pitch in sound would be caused by the compression of sound waves. I would have thought radio wavea would act differently as the signal would get to the receiver faster however the underlying signal wouldn't have changed. I know this makes sense in my head at least. But i would be happy to be proven otherwise.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformations How is your special relativity / spacetime? Hope that helps. Worms, opened, of, can...... lol
Radio waves travel at the speed of light. Thus on your spaceship, observing a radio wave while travelling at 1/40th c will result in a very small wavelength shift of 1.0253 x the original wavelength.
Regarding your question about a train's lights: they don't travel faster than light in a vacuum. Due to time slowing down the faster you go, at c the particles don't really experience time: they just are formed at the light, arrive in your eyes, and disappear all at the same instant. Whilst we won't see the speed of light, with it moving towards us, it merely just appears in and out of existance. Essentially, the train is stopped as the light is produced. There's no sort of carried on speed. Regarding waves getting bigger and smaller as per doppler: it requires a lot of speed for that to happen. For instance, if you sped though a red light, but wanted to claim you saw it as green, you'd need to be travelling at c/6. Edit: however, particles can travel faster than light, if the light is slowed down by a medium. Obviously, the particles won't be at c, but neither will the light. This is Cherenkov Radiation, and produces a beautiful blue glow. Seriously, it's gorgeous.
