I asked my physics prof about this during a special relativity lecture and stumped him. His response was little more than restating the postulates of special relativity, and left me hanging with no answer.

Let's assume you have an object that is moving through space extremely fast. Let's say it is a rocket traveling at a constant velocity of 0.999999C. This rocket emits a laser. The theory of special relativity states that light is always observed to be traveling at C (3e8 m/s) in every inertial frame of reference.

Say we tracked the positions of the rocket and the laser beam in two different frames of reference: that of the rocket, and a 'stationary' frame. From the 'stationary' frame of reference, an observer will see the positions of both the rocket and the laser beam staying very close together, diverging at a rate of (1-0.999999)C. After a period of time, t, the distance between the rocket and the furthest point of the laser beam will be (1-0.999999)Ct. However, from the frame of reference of the rocket, special relativity states that the laser will be observed at speed C at all times, so if we again track the positions of both the rocket and laser, they will be diverging at a rate of C, and the distance between them at a time t will be Ct.

How does the theory of special relativity reconcile this (what seems to me) huge contradiction?