Speed of light

The Speed of Light is a spectacle of curiosity for many of us out there.  Is the speed of light the limit, like in java how 2^31 (2,147,483,647) is the limit?  Or do you think speed has no boundaries?  For example, I throw an egg from a moving car at 40mph and the car is traveling 60mph, the egg is going to smack that white siding with 100mph behind it.  So, if we have a space ship (because I'm pretty sure we'd only want to achieve this in space) going the speed of light (if that's possible) and it turns on some high beams, are the light waves that the high beams are emitting traveling twice the speed of light?

I'd like for you to tell me your opinion on what exactly it is.  Tell me your opinion on Relativity.  I can honestly tell you, I only dream about this stuff.  I have no math experience regarding stuff like this.  So, I just want what you think is possible, and what the speed of light exactly is.  And if you feel like adding something extra, try and explain what light IS.  I don't think anyone knows :p

From a logical perspective the "high beams" are already light and are already moving at the speed of light.  The reason light stretches out in front of you is because, whether going 60mph or 100mph, the light is still going many tens of thousands miles faster than you.  If you moved even incredibly close to the speed of light, you could stay on an equal footing with the tip of that light as it emits.

Emitted by a vehicle moving at the speed of light, in the direction of movement, light would do little - the light would be trapped at the point of radiation.

I have no degree in this respect but I would conjecture the speed of light has some relation to the amount of entropy that can exist before a system is no longer affected by any kind of attraction forces.  Kind of like absolute zero, when atoms are so stagnant that the normal attraction forces are free to pull each atom closer to its neighbors.

I figured as much with the whole high beam idea.  So if the light would be trapped at the point of radiation, would it gather, since it could not escape?  That's what awes me the most out of all of this, is that light isn't matter, so it's nearly impossible to gather.  Yet, seeing as a reflective barrier would be behind it, what else could it do?  Only logical thing I can see is for it to convert.  But I have no clue in to what, or the means by which it would in the vacuum of outer space.

I see what you mean.  You bring up some great points, so, what's your theory on relativity? :)

It's a thing thats been thought out by very clever physicists (of which i'm not one) and it basically says the speed of light is the fastest anything can go at all.

Basically if you're not moving then light will go past you at the speed of light.
If you're moving at the speed of light then from your perspective the light from the headlights will be moving away from you at the speed of light as if you were stationary.
And if you're stationary and watching a spaceship or something fly past with its headlights on then the ship and the light from the headlights will be going at the speed of light.

Its all about special relativity and absolute motion and weird spacetimey things that I stopped trying to keep track of ages ago.

Light explanation.

So, light is made of photons.

Photons have no mass when they are still (they do not exist).

Relativity demonstrates that when an object approaches the speed of light, the force of acceleration is converted into mass at a ratio of mc^2.

So photons are pure energy converted into mass due to speed.

Due to this mature nothing can exceed the speed of something that has no mass.

Hope that helped :)

The speed of light is relative.

If the universe were smaller, the total distance it travels across the universe is either (1) proportional and thus compared to an earlier time, light of today is faster, or (2) static and went across the universe faster.

In order for 2 to be true, time must not be relative and we know that time is relative because of our satellite system. Therefore the speed of light is a function of time.

Light is not without mass. I don't know how you monkeys could think that. It is the quanta of mass -- although you may have fractions of a quanta if you divide it's static time.

Original Poster, here.

I think I remember hearing before that light did, in fact, have mass.  And that some amount of sunlight in kg was added to the Earth's mass daily.  Now, I'm not too sure how how truthful that is, and if it can actually be proved.

Another cool thing that I've thought about light and essentially sound, is that everything we see and perceive, in any way, has already happened! 
Of course, it's so obvious.  Sure, the time that something actually happened as to when we perceived it was different, but it's so minute it's hard to account for.  But it makes you wonder, since we only see because light comes to us, and sound compressions and rarefactions, that we're dwelling in the past! 
Where I'm going with this is since we can't perceive that time in which something happens and when we actually see it (similarly HEAR it, but this is to a much larger degree), why couldn't it be done on a much larger scale?

You know exactly what I mean, time travel and time distortion.