Quote:
Originally Posted by Morepower
This has probably already been answered, but, if the beams are travelling toward each other at almost the speed of light at what relative speed do they collide at ? Nearly double the speed of light ? Or is there some "speed of light" rule preventing such collision velocities ?
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The thing about relativity is that what you see is
relative to your reference frame.
So as more and more energy is poured into the particles, they approach the speed of light, c, but can never get there. The energy increases the relativitistic mass rather than adding velocity.
So we, standing at the LHC, see 2 particles crash together at a large portion of c each, however, from the point of view of one of the particles, the approaching or passing particle would appear to be approaching at a speed even closer to c
and with more mass than we observe.
Al.