4 cosmic phenomena move faster than the speed of light

Cherenkov radiation, the inflation of the universe right after Big Bang, entangled quantum and deep holes are cosmic phenomena that can reach the state of "faster than light".

According to Business Insider, the famous equation E = mc2 corresponds to the energy and mass that Einstein gave in 1905, meaning that no object with mass can move faster than light. The speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second.

Particle accelerators like the LHC can speed up subatomic particles (electrons, protons, neutrons .) to speeds of 99.99% of light, but like Nobel laureate David Gross explained, these particles can never reach the speed of light. The only particle moving at the speed of light is the photon - the particle has no mass.

However, physicists have found that certain phenomena can reach a state faster than light and still obey the laws of the universe set by the theory of relativity, they do not reject reason. Einstein's theory which only gives us greater insight into the strange behavior of light in the field of quantum.

Cherenkov radiation

Cherenkov radiation in nuclear reactors.(Photo: Argonne National Laboratory)

When an object moves faster than sound, it creates ultrasonic explosions. Therefore, in theory, if something moves faster than light, it must also produce a "light bomb".

In fact, these light bombs still happen every day and can be observed with the naked eye. It is called Cherenkov radiation , according to Soviet scientist Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov, manifesting blue light in nuclear reactors. He was the first to measure it in 1934 and won the 1958 Nobel Prize in physics with his discovery.

This radiation is generated by the core of the reactor immersed in water to cool it. In water, the speed of light is only 75% of the speed of outside vacuum. Therefore, the electrons generated from the reaction in the furnace will go faster in water than light. This process generates shock waves of light, like the case of supersonic aircraft. These shock waves are often blue, or sometimes ultraviolet rays that the naked eye cannot see.

However, in this case, the speed of electrons is only faster than the speed of light in the water, not really reaching the limit of 299,792.458m / s.

Inflation after Big Bang

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

As mentioned above, objects of mass never reach the speed of light. In addition to the photon, the absolute vacuum can also be considered a massless "object" because there is no material contained in it.

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

This is a phenomenon that physicists think happens right after Big Bang, in the process called inflation , which was first hypothesized in the 1980s by two physicists Alan Guth and Andrei Linde. In one billionth of a first second, the universe doubled in size, resulting in the outer boundary expanding very fast, surpassing the speed of light.