An burst of energy from space that appears to be accomplishing the impossible—traveling seven times faster than the speed of light—has been seen by astronomers.
Superluminal velocity, a cosmic illusion, is what causes a jet of particles released by two merging stars to appear to move seven times faster than light.
Of course, this is an optical illusion caused by the uncommon and perplexing phenomena known as superluminal motion, which happens when particles approach the speed of light. In this instance, researchers found a jet of energy erupting from a stellar collision site at a startling 99.97% of the speed of light, or approximately 670 million mph (1.07 billion km/h), or 1.07 billion miles per hour.
At almost the speed of light, a jet of particles emerges from a black hole. Recently, a similar jet that appeared to defy physics was discovered coming from two neutron stars that were colliding. (Photo courtesy of NASA Goddard)
The jet in issue is the outcome of a cosmic catastrophe that initially attracted attention from scientists in 2017. Over 140 million light-years from Earth, neutron stars—ultra-dense, collapsed star cores that compress a sun’s worth of material into a ball little bigger than a city—were found to have violently collided that year. Gravitational waves are distortions in space-time caused by a collision that was so powerful that they appeared.
Following a collision between two black holes that was observed in 2016, scientists have discovered the evidence to support Albert Einstein’s 1916 prediction that these space-time ripples exist. The gravitational waves produced by the colliding neutron stars in 2017 were the first to be noticed coming from a source other than a black hole, GW17081, demonstrating that many cosmic catastrophes can produce them.
Although they cannot be seen with the naked eye, gravitational waves can be detected with instruments like those at the Pasadena-based Large Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO). In order to learn as much as they could about the merger, scientists from all around the world concentrated their telescopes on it when LIGO discovered the initial explosion of waves from merging stars in 2017. Astronomers soon saw a fast-moving jet of particles erupting from the collision site and illuminating globules of debris blasted by the stars.
In their latest research, astronomers investigated the jet using the NASA Hubble Satellite Telescope, the Gaia space observatory, and six additional radio telescopes on Earth. These data allowed the scientists to calculate both the actual jet speed and the fictitious, physics-defying speed.
The beyond-light-speed illusion is brought on by the difference in speed between the jet’s constituent particles and the light particles (or photons) they discharge. It can appear that particles in the early stages of the jet arrive at Earth roughly at the same time as photons in the later stages of the jet because the particles in the jet move almost as quickly as the light they emit, giving the impression that the jet is moving faster than the speed of light.
This deception has already been seen in a number of other celestial phenomena, such as a jet that is erupting from the Messier 87 galaxy in the Virgo constellation.
Thus far, all instances of superluminal travel can be mathematically modeled in a way that does not go against accepted physical laws.
