• 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

The Cherenkov Effect: What Happens When Particles Move Faster Than Light?

July 4, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

The speed of light in a vacuum is the absolute speed limit of the universe. Nothing will go faster than 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per second), according to Einstein’s work, as it would require an infinite amount of energy to do so.

However, that doesn’t mean that light can’t be beaten in terms of speed under the right set of circumstances, and when that happens something strange called the “Cherenkov effect” can take place. In water, for example, light is slowed down to a sluggish 200,000 kilometers per second (124,274 miles per second). Ok, we will grudgingly admit that that’s still pretty fast, and any particle wishing to break that speed would require 175 kiloelectron volts of energy behind it.

Advertisement

This does sometimes happen. In 1934, Soviet physicist Pavel Cherenkov witnessed what happens when it does, after bombarding  water with radiation. A blue light, now known as Cherenkov light or Cherenkov radiation, was emitted from the water. 

He and colleagues Il´ja Mikhailovich Frank and Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm figured out what was causing the strange glow: charged subatomic particles moving faster than the speed of light (in water) producing an effect similar to a sonic boom, which occurs when (for example) a plane travels faster than the speed of sound. For their work, they were awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Now, another cool thing about Cherenkov radiation is that it can sometimes occur in your head. For decades, people undergoing radiotherapy for cancer have reported seeing flashes of blue light in their eyes, even when their eyes were closed. 

Advertisement

In 2020, researchers used technology called a CDose camera imaging system, specially designed to view light emissions from biological systems, to capture an image of the light.

This helped prove that the reports were genuine, and provided evidence that the light was indeed Cherenkov light, a subject of some debate.

“As the radiation beam passes through the eye, light is generated within the vitreous fluid. Our real-time data rigorously showed that the amount of light produced is sufficient to elicit a visual sensation – a topic that has been debated in the literature,” first author Irwin Tendler explained in a statement at the time. “By analyzing the spectral composition, we also show that this emission can be classified as Cherenkov light.”

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Take Five: Big in Japan
  2. Struggle over Egypt’s Juhayna behind arrest of founder, son – Amnesty
  3. Exclusive-Northvolt plots EV battery grab with $750 million Swedish lab plan
  4. What Is The Heaviest Object In The Universe?

Source Link: The Cherenkov Effect: What Happens When Particles Move Faster Than Light?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Hippos Hung Around In Europe 80,000 Years Later Than We Thought
  • Officially Gone: Slender-Billed Curlew, Once-Widespread Migratory Bird, Declared Extinct By IUCN
  • Watch: Rare Footage Captures Freaky Faceless Cusk Eels Lurking On The Deep-Sea Floor
  • Watch This Funky Sea Pig Dancing Its Way Through The Deep Sea, Over 2,300 Meters Below The Surface
  • NASA Lets YouTuber Steve Mould Test His “Weird Chain Theory” In Space
  • The Oldest Stalagmite Ever Dated Was Found In Oklahoma Rocks, Dating Back 289 Million Years
  • 2024’s Great American Eclipse Made Some Birds Behave In Surprising Ways, But Not All Were Fooled
  • “Carter Catastrophe”: The Math Equation That Predicts The End Of Humanity
  • Why Is There No Nobel Prize For Mathematics?
  • These Are The Only Animals Known To Incubate Eggs In Their Stomachs And Give “Birth” Out Their Mouths
  • Constipated? This One Fruit Could Help, Says First-Ever Evidence-Led Diet Guidance
  • NGC 2775: This Galaxy Breaks The Rules Of “Galactic Evolution” And Baffles Astronomers
  • Meet The “Four-Eyed” Hirola, The World’s Most Endangered Antelope With Fewer Than 500 Left
  • The Bizarre 1997 Experiment That Made A Frog Levitate
  • There’s A Very Good Reason Why October 1582 On Your Phone Is Missing 10 Days
  • Skynet-1A: Military Spacecraft Launched 56 Years Ago Has Been Moved By Persons Unknown
  • There’s A Simple Solution To Helping Avoid Erectile Dysfunction (But You’re Not Going To Like It)
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS May Be 10 Billion Years Old, This Rare Spider Is Half-Female, Half-Male Split Down The Middle, And Much More This Week
  • Why Do Trains Not Have Seatbelts? It’s Probably Not What You Think
  • World’s Driest Hot Desert Just Burst Into A Rare And Fleeting Desert Bloom
  • 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