What If You Rode Your Bike at the Speed of Light?

So you think you're pretty good on that bike, huh? How fast can you go? Have you done any cool jumps? That's cool, I guess, but compared to what I'm going to show you, that stuff is child's play. We took it upon ourselves to give your bike a bit of an upgrade. Better shocks, a nice new bell and oh, I almost forgot, it can travel at the speed of light. What would you see while you're riding and how would you look to other people? And this is safe, right? This is what if, and here's what would happen if you rode your bike at the speed of light. They say that travelling at lightspeed is just like riding a bike. Once you do it, you never forget how. OK, they don't actually say that, but if you did manage to pedal your way to lightspeed, it's an experience you won't soon forget. The speed of light is about 300 million meters per second. It's a speed goal that may seem ambitious, but with the new bike we gave you, you should be able to get there. We do recommend wearing a helmet, you know, just in case. As you pick up speed, you're going to notice a few changes. First, you would experience time dilation. Basically, the faster something moves, the slower it moves through time. If you're biking along at the speed of light, time would stand still for you. Pretty cool, right? But then things start to get trippy. You'd see something called the Doppler effect. This would cause the color of the objects around you to become distorted. As you get closer to objects, they'll turn blue with light. Different colors show us different energies and wavelengths. The higher the energy, the smaller the wavelength you're seeing. Approaching objects turn blue because their wavelengths are being compressed. If you look back at the objects you've passed, they'll start to turn red as their wavelengths are stretching out. The further you go, you would start to see wavelengths unseen by the human eye. Ultraviolet or infrared wavelengths would be so compressed that you could actually see thermal radiation. Enjoy the predator vision while you can, though it's not going to last. Here's the thing, the faster you move, the darker everything behind you will be as their photons will be less able to reach your eyes. It would be like biking through a big scary tunnel and eventually you would only see darkness. Also, now would be a good time to pump the brakes. If you bike for longer than one second, you may end up halfway to Mars. It would be an experience to say the least, but what would it look like to other people? Well, research from the University of Surrey might be able to help us out with this one. OK, so this is the bike before it starts moving. Clearly they spared no expense on visual representation. Next, the bike picks up speed. The light scattered from the front wheel of the bicycle will travel a shorter distance than the light scattered from the back wheel. The biker is travelling so fast that when the light reaches the spectators eyes, the bicycle will be much closer to them than it was when the light was scattered. Essentially, it would almost look like a long photo exposure in that the bike becomes one long movement. The bicycle will be made-up of a patchwork of itself at different times. That poor viewer will see both your face and back at the same time. Will it be a once in a lifetime experience? Sure. Will they need therapy? We think so. In other words, it's a mess to look at. In fact, whoever watched this lightspeed bike ride is probably going to throw up. Talk about whiplash. So could you burn some rubber and go as fast as the speed of light? No, sorry. As of now, travelling at lightspeed is impossible, especially for commercial bicycles. But what if we invested in that technology and we're able to leave the speed limit in the dust? What if we had working warp Dr. technology? Well, that's a story for another What if?