But in fact all the separate light pulses were at the same time from different and causally unconnected point sources on the rotating neutron star. This makes it look as though light pulses produced later in time have somehow caught up with the first pulse – which means they must have moved faster than light. The light boom itself is still just light moving at the speed of light, but it’s been amplified by the addition of separate light pulses. It’s been proposed that a superluminal Mexican wave of synchrotron radiation might emanate from different point sources on a rapidly rotating neutron star within an intense magnetic field – producing a light boom, which is like a sonic boom but with light rather than sound waves. This illusion is an example of apparent superluminal motion.
It’s really just a trick – there is no causal connection between the bulbs firing – but it looks as though a sequence of actions (first one, then two, then three) moved faster than light across the row of bulbs – kind of like a Mexican wave in a crowd. It’s easy enough to make them fire off in sequence – first one, then two, then three – and you can keep reducing the time delay between each one firing until you have a situation where bulb 2 fires off after bulb 1 in less time than light would need to travel the distance between bulbs 1 and 2. Imagine you arrange a line of light bulbs which are independently triggered. So, here’s a few legitimately measurable examples of superluminal, or at least apparent superluminal, motion. However, relativity physics is built upon the principle that the speed of light in a vacuum is always constant – and this value c is then used as a constant within the mathematics of relativity. Light speed varies significantly through glass, water and other refractive media. The ‘in a vacuum’ point is important here. Relativity physics specifically requires that nothing can move or transmit information faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Here we’ll just stick to directly measurable examples of superluminal motion – although it turns out most of them are either optical illusions, or they kind of, sort of exceed light speed in a way that doesn’t conflict with relativity physics.
It is a fundamental principle of Einstein’s relativity physics that nothing can move than light – but there are various ways to kind of, sort of move faster than light – and this podcast is about those various ways. Hi this is Steve Nerlich from Cheap Astronomy and this is Superluminal motion. Wishing astronomers around the world: Clear skies.! CSOG allows you to target deep-sky objects and carbon stars you never observed before, night after night. The observing guides contain thousands of objects to observe through amateur telescopes, with matching tours for GOTO telescopes and matching AstroPlanner plan-files. Today’s Sponsor: This episode of 365 days of astronomy was sponsored by Clear Skies Observing Guides, a Modern Day Celestial Handbook.Clear skies observing guides, or CSOG, is a new concept in visual amateur astronomy. Description: Cheap Astronomy investigates the various scenarios under which you can, kind-of sort-of, achieve faster-than-light velocities – except not really.īio: Cheap Astronomy has a poke around in the sub-atomic world and (who would have thunk it) finds astronomy there.
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