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Nothing is faster than light. But researchers have discovered a beam of energy in space that appears to be seven times the speed of light.
Pasadena – Researchers have made an extraordinary discovery in space: they found a gigantic beam of energy that appears to be breaking the laws of physics. The beam appears to be traveling seven times faster than light, measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope have shown. That’s actually impossible: Light moves in a vacuum at a speed of 1,079,252,820 kilometers per hour – it couldn’t get any faster, as Albert Einstein showed more than 100 years ago in his special theory of relativity.
But how is it possible that the discovered particle beam seems to break the laws of physics? Not at all, write researchers in a study on the subject. It’s an optical illusion, a phenomenon called superluminal motion. This phenomenon occurs when particles move at almost the speed of light – in the current case, the researchers were able to prove that the energy beam travels at 99.97 percent of the speed of light (about 1.07 billion km/h). The research team led by Kunal P. Mooley from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena did the study in the journal Nature released.
Space: particle beam seems to break the laws of physics
The starting point of the remarkable particle beam was a gigantic collision of two neutron stars. The explosive event in space was discovered in August 2017 – it was the first time that both gravitational waves and gamma rays were measured from a merger of two neutron stars, according to the US space agency NASA. The aftermath of this merger was observed by 70 telescopes around the world and in space – including the Hubble Space Telescope, which was pointed at the scene two days after the explosion.
What happened? The two neutron stars collapsed into one black hole, whose tremendous gravity began to attract material. The material formed a disc that spun rapidly, producing beams of energy that emanated from the disc’s poles. For several years, researchers analyzed the data that Hubble had collected. “I’m thrilled that ‘Hubble’ has given us such precise measurements,” said Kunal P. Mooley, lead author of the study. “It took months of careful data analysis to make this measurement,” says Jay Anderson of the Space Telescope Science Institute.
After cosmic collapse: energy beam traveling faster than light?
But how do the researchers explain the phenomenon that seems to make the beam of energy faster than light? The beam of energy approaches Earth at nearly the speed of light, so the light it emits at a later date travels a shorter distance. “Essentially, the jet is chasing its own light,” says NASA’s website. In reality, more time has elapsed between the emission of light by the beam than the observer thinks, which is why the speed is overestimated. (tab)
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