• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Shadows Can “Move” Across A Surface Faster Than The Speed Of Light

July 17, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Traveling faster than the speed of light in a vacuum is impossible, according to Einstein’s theory of special relativity.

Advertisement

Particles without mass must travel at the speed of light, while any other object cursed with mass finds that it cannot approach 299,792,458 meters per second (983,571,056 feet per second) without expending infinite amounts of energy. Physicists and sci-fi writers have tried to get around this, with concepts like the warp drive. But likely these will turn out to be forbidden by those pesky laws of physics, given that any faster-than-light travel can lead to universe-breaking paradoxes.



However, there is something in the room with you right now that can break the speed of light, assuming you are not sat in a dark room. Shadows are able to exceed the speed of light – and absolutely smash it, in fact. 

You may have questions, such as “what the hell are you talking about?”. Imagine you have a torch powerful enough to light up the moon to some extent. Pass a finger across the front of the torch quickly, and the shadow your finger cast can move across the lunar surface at speeds far in excess of the speed of light. 

The same sort of idea can be achieved by simply waving a laser across the night sky. If you imagine a giant dome placed (to pick a number) 100 light-years across surrounding you, when this laser hits it 100 years in the future the points will whizz across the dome at speeds far exceeding that of light. 

Advertisement



But both these examples are just illusions.

“Just the image of the beam as it races across the night sky is moving faster than light, but there is no message, no net information, no material object that actually moves along this image,” astrophysicist Michio Kaku explained in the Big Think.

The laser point is not really moving per se – what you are seeing is the photons hitting the dome, shortly followed by different photons hitting a different part of the dome after you moved your laser 100 years in the past. 

A gif showing that shadows move at the speed of light.

Shadows still move at the speed of light.

Nothing really moved faster than light, and no information was transferred, leaving the universe and physics intact.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. China vehicle sales slid 18% in August – industry body
  2. Fed’s Powell: Reopening economic bottlenecks could be “more enduring”
  3. The World’s Oldest Bottle Of Wine Might Actually Be Safe To Drink
  4. How Coffee Could Protect Against Alzheimer’s: Espresso Found To Inhibit Tau Proteins

Source Link: Shadows Can "Move" Across A Surface Faster Than The Speed Of Light

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Hui Te Rangiora: Old Māori Legend Suggests They May Have Discovered Antarctica 1,000 Years Before Europeans
  • “Potential Impact On Saturn”: Astronomers Appeal For Help As Video Appears To Show Object Hitting The Gas Giant
  • What Is Prosopometamorphopsia? The “Exceedingly Rare” Condition That Made A Patient See Faces As Dragons
  • Are We In An Enormous Void? It Could Explain What’s Wrong With Our Model Of The Universe
  • Woylies Boing Back Into Western Australia Thanks To Groundbreaking Wildlife Project
  • North America’s Oldest Pterosaur And Turtle Fossils Found In Arizona’s Petrified Forest
  • Proposed “Dark Dwarfs” Near The Galactic Center Could Reveal The Nature Of Dark Matter
  • Watch: 18-Kilometer-High Ash Cloud Looms Over Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki After “Explosive” Eruption
  • “ShipGoo001”: Mystery Of Entirely New Lifeform Discovered Coating A Great Lakes Ship
  • Rare White Humpback Whale Calf Filmed By Drone Off Australia’s East Coast
  • Who Was Buried At Cave Of Salome: A Female Disciple, Jesus’ Midwife, Or A Princess?
  • “Hidden” Changes To US Health Data Swapping “Gender” For “Sex” Spark Fears For Public Trust
  • Easter Island Was Never As Isolated As We Thought – Study Puts That “Strange Argument” To Bed
  • If Birds Are Dinosaurs, Why Are None As Big As T. Rexes?
  • Psychologists Demonstrate Illusion That Could Be Screwing Up Our Perception Of Time
  • Why Are So Many Enormous Roman Shoes Being Discovered At Hadrian’s Wall?
  • Scientists Think They’ve Pinpointed Structural Differences In Psychopaths’ Brains
  • We’ve Found Our Third-Ever Interstellar Visitor, Orcas Filmed Kissing (With Tongues) In The Wild, And Much More This Week
  • The “Eyes Of Clavius” Will Be Visible On The Moon Today, Thanks To Clair-Obscur Effect
  • Shockingly High Microplastic Levels Found On Remote Mediterranean Coral Reef Island
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version