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Cherenkov Radiation - traveling faster than light

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-is-cherenkov-radiation
21•andsoitis•51m ago

Comments

baxtr•12m ago
In water!

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

sigmoid10•5m 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 for example measure Cherenkov Radiation in the air (where n~=1.0003 or 99.97% of c) from highly energetic cosmic rays.

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

nuccy•10m 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...

HPsquared•8m ago
I wonder if there could be something other than vacuum, in which light would travel faster.
anon48293•5m ago
Kind of, with trickery.

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

ttyyzz•1m ago
Probably not, to get light to move faster, you don't need a new medium - you just need less of the universe getting in its way.
chinathrow•4m 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.

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