Question

A spaceship moves away from a space station at one-half the speed of light. If a person in the space station flashes a light beacon, people in the ship will see light traveling toward them at a speed of what?

Answer 1

The people in the ship will see light travelling toward them at speed of light.

Step-by-step explanation:

As the spaceship is moving away from the space station with one half speed of light. The light travelling from the space station with velocity c which is also termed as speed of light will be moving relative to the people in spaceship. So the relative velocities can be found as

`u^(\prime)=(u-v)/(1-(u v)/(c^(2)))`

In this case, u’ is the speed of light seen by the people in spaceship and u is the velocity of light while v is the velocity of moving spaceship.So u =c and v =
`(c)/(2)`. Then

`u^(\prime)=(c-c / 2)/(1-(c * c / 2)/(c^(2)))=(c / 2)/(1-(c^(2))/(2 c^(2)))=(c / 2)/(1 / 2)=c`

Thus, the light travelling towards the people in the ship will view that light with the speed of light itself.