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Photonic Booms (Synopsis) [Starts With A Bang]
Imagine the surface of the Moon, so distant, and an infinitely precise and powerful laser pointer. With a flick of your wrist, you can send the dot that you see flying across the Moon’s surface as quickly as you can manage.
Image credit: Sabine Hossenfelder.
Without too much difficulty, in fact, you’ll find yourself breaking the speed of light! Not in terms of violating special relativity or anything, but if you follow the motion of the dot, you’ll not only find that it appears to move faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, c, but that its behavior is more interesting — and more counterintuitive — than you’d ever imagined. This can take place, believe it or not, for any type of reflected light.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/U. Hamburg/J.Ness et al; Optical: NASA/STScI, of X-rays reflecting off of Saturn (L).
Source: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2015/03/10/photonic-booms-synopsis/
