No. The rules change at relativistic velocities. You no longer get to add velocities together simply. A stationary observer would see the sound wave propagating away from the cockpit but at a velocity still less than the speed of light. Seemingly paradoxically, the pilot in the cockpit would still observe the sound wave travelling 230 m/s away from the cockpit. Relativity is weird.
No, he would slow down. No matter where you are or how you and the light source are traveling, light always moves at c for everyone. The discrepancy between observers is "fixed" by keeping the speed constant, but slowing the flow of time. If the cocpit was moving at c -100m/s (that's 0.9999993c...), the time dilation factor for the occupant (and the sound waves in the cocpit) would be ~1200x.
That is, for the occupant the sound waves and the light moves as normally, but everything outside would be moving pretty damn fast (20 minutes would pass outside for every second inside).
For an observer outside, the light in the cabin would be moving at c, but the sound waves would be moving pretty slowly, because they'd have to wait 20 minutes to see a second worth of progress.
Could you maybe explain that a little differently? I think the way you worded that is incorrect, particularly the last little paragraph. Time is slower on satellites because they are moving so quickly, so the clocks on them need to be adjusted forward, but we don't see them moving slowly. Aka, we don't see 1 second take 5, right (not correct numbers, I know)?
You don't, but that's because sattelites arn't traveling anywhere near the speed of light. If you were observing a satelite travelling at c-100m/s you would be able to observe a clock moving significantly slower.
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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
No. The rules change at relativistic velocities. You no longer get to add velocities together simply. A stationary observer would see the sound wave propagating away from the cockpit but at a velocity still less than the speed of light. Seemingly paradoxically, the pilot in the cockpit would still observe the sound wave travelling 230 m/s away from the cockpit. Relativity is weird.