2 cosmic phenomena move faster than the speed of light

Cherenkov radiation, the inflation of the universe shortly after the Big Bang are cosmic phenomena can reach a state of "faster than light".

According to Business Insider, the famous equation E = mc2 relationship between energy and mass that Einstein made in 1905 mean that there is not a mass object can travel faster than light. The speed of light by 299,792,458 meters / second.

The LHC particle accelerator like can accelerate subatomic particles (electrons, protons, neutrons ...) up to 99.99% the speed of light, but as a physicist and Nobel laureate David Gross explained , these particles can never reach the speed of light. Single particle motion with the speed of light is a photon - massless particles.

However, physicists have found a certain phenomenon can reach faster than light status and still obey the laws of the universe were set up by special relativity, they are not refuted theory Einstein's only give us more insight about the strange behavior of light in quantum field.

Cherenkov radiation

When an object moving faster than sound, it will generate the ultrasound burst. Therefore, theoretically, if there is something moving faster than light, it must also create an effective "light bomb".

In fact, the bombings light persists daily and can be observed with the naked eye. It is called Cherenkov radiation, after Soviet scientist Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov, manifest is light blue in the nuclear reactor. He was the first measured it in 1934 and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1958 for his discovery.

Cherenkov radiation in a nuclear reactor. Photo: Argonne National Laboratory

This radiation emitted by the core of the reactor is immersed in water for cooling. In the water, the speed of light is only 75% speed external vacuum region. Therefore, the electrons generated by the reaction in the furnace will go in the water faster than light. This process generates seismic waves of light, like the case of supersonic aircraft. These shockwaves are usually blue, or sometimes as the ultraviolet rays that are not visible to the naked eye.

However, in this case, the speed of the electrons just faster than the speed of light in water, not really reached the limit of 299,792,458 m / s.

Inflation after Big Bang

As mentioned above, the volume figure never reached the speed of light. In addition to photons, absolute vacuum can be considered as an "object" massless because no matter contained therein.

"Since no material contained inside, the vacuum can expand faster than the speed of light", the theoretical astrophysicist Michio Kaku said.

3D map of the universe with distance of 10.8 billion years light from Earth. Photo: Casey Stark (UC Berkeley) / Khee-Gan Lee (MPIA)

This is the phenomenon that physicists believe occur shortly after the Big Bang, the process is called inflation, first theorized in the 1980s by two physicists Alan Guth and Andrei Linde. In a billionth of a second first rate, continuous universe doubles in size, the result is a rapidly expanding outer edge, surpassing the speed of light.