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Mirror moving near the speed of light

Physics Asked by gunslinger on June 26, 2021

Suppose I am looking at a moving mirror, the image will move at twice the speed of the mirror but what if the mirror was to move with half the speed of light? How will my image look and what if the mirror exceeded the half the speed of light? Will the image lag from my point of view?

2 Answers

The image will appear to move at the speed of light. If you move the mirror faster, the image will appear to exceed the speed of light.

Special relativity only forbids physical objects from going faster than the speed of light. There is no contradiction if non-physical objects such as images, laser beams, or shadows travel faster than light.

Answered by Chris on June 26, 2021

In the rest frame of the mirror, by symmetry your mirror image's velocity is the negative of yours. So in your rest frame, the mirror image moves at $frac{1/2+1/2}{1+(1/2)^2}c=4c/5$.

That's the speed that would be measured by a radar speed gun, for example (although only if the radar signal is not detected by the gun when it's reflecting off the "mirror image" (which is actually you), since otherwise you're measuring the speed of the mirror instead).

Answered by benrg on June 26, 2021

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