If there's one thing that science fiction is nearly universal
on, it's that traveling at or beyond the speed of light looks
really freakin' awesome. Star Trek had those rainbow star lines
zipping by, Star Wars had something similar, and Spaceballs went
all the way to plaid. The reality, unfortunately, may not be
nearly as cool. Physics students at the University of Leicester
decided to buzzkill the entire sci-fi genre by going and
calculating what would happen if you were to kick a spaceship up
to the speed of light and look out a window. This is about the
extent of what you'd see: Yeah. Boresville. The reason this is
all you'd get is because of the Doppler effect, which says that
the frequency of a wave changes as you move relative to its
source. You've heard the Doppler effect in action plenty of
times: it's what causes a police siren to change from high pitch
to low pitch as the police car drives past you. As the car
approaches, the sound waves it's emitting bunch together,
increasing their frequency and c