Cherenkov Radiation - traveling faster than light (iaea.org)

20 pointsby andsoitisan hour ago6 comments

nuccy 9 minutes ago

The title (likely intentionally) is misleading, it should say "travelling faster than light in a medium". Nothing here travels faster than light in vacuum.

BTW there are special types of telescopes used to observe gamma rays - they cannot see gamma ray directly but observe a flash of Cherenkov light of a cascade of charged particles created when gamma ray hits atoms in the atmosphere. Those telescopes are Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes [1].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAGIC_(telescope) or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VERITAS or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Energy_Stereoscopic_Syste... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_Telescope_Array_Obse...

chinathrow 3 minutes ago

> How can something travel faster than light?

> Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. However, in other mediums, particles can potentially move faster than light. For instance, while in water, light would instantly slow down to 75% of its normal speed, but there are other particles that don’t slow down as much and end up moving faster than light. Whenever that happens, a blue or violet glow occurs.

After reading this answer, I was not any wiser.

baxtr 11 minutes ago

In water!

"In water" is the "In mice" equivalent for physics.

sigmoid10 4 minutes ago

Technically it's any medium. The lower the refractive index, the closer the particle needs to travel to the speed of light in vacuum. But you can measure Cherenkov Radiation in the atmosphere (where n~=1.0003 or 99.97% of c) from highly energetic cosmic rays.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaging_atmospheric_Cherenkov_...

HPsquared 7 minutes ago

I wonder if there could be something other than vacuum, in which light would travel faster.

anon48293 4 minutes ago

Kind of, with trickery.

https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLig...