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Home » Space/Science

Filming the speed of light II. April 6, 2022 8:45 am ER

I just remembered…

A natural phenomenon related to this experiment has been observed in astronomy for decades. When a supernova exploded in one of the Magellanic Clouds (A nearby galaxy) back in the 1980s, the flash traveled away from the explosion in all directions; a spherical shock front. It took thousands of years before that front reached earth. However, that expanding sphere of light also traveled in all directions away from the SN, at light speed. Scattered around the site of the explosion were clouds of gas and dust, ejected by the star previous to its final outburst, several light months away fromn the SN star. As the sphere of light hit these clouds, they reflected the flash in all directions, and some of those flashes were visible from earth, where telescopes were still trained on that spot studying the aftermath of the explosion.

The result was that for months after the supernova was first detected on earth, other reflections were detected as well. These flashes did not necessarily originate from clouds at right angles to the line of sight, they were scattered all around the SN. It appeared that the light flash was travelling at speeds exceeding the speed of light, but this was just an optical illusion caused by the geometry of the original flash, the location of the reflector, and the location of the observer.

  • The video by RL 2022-04-06 18:03:09
    • Details by RL 2022-04-06 18:04:39
    • Interesting. What an amazing Universe. by podrock 2022-04-06 11:51:44

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