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    speed of light tagged posts

    ‘Cosmic Cannibals’ Expel Jets into Space at 40 percent the Speed of Light

    March 30, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist's impression of neutron star jet
    Nuclear explosions on a neutron star feed its jets
    File name:     Burst_jet_concept_v10_final.jpg
    Credit: Danielle Futselaar and Nathalie Degenaar, Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam. License CC BY-SA 3.0

    For the first time, astronomers have measured the speed of fast-moving jets in space, crucial to star formation and the distribution of elements needed for life.

    The jets of matter, expelled by stars deemed ‘cosmic cannibals’, were measured to travel at over one-third of the speed of light — thanks to a groundbreaking new experiment published in Nature today.

    The study sheds new light on these violent processes, making clever use of runaway nuclear explosions on the surface of stars.

    Co-Author Jakob van den Eijnden, Warwick Prize Fellow at the Department of Physic...

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    High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory Tests Speed of Light

    April 6, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Physics

    This compound graphic shows a view of the sky in ultra-high energy gamma rays. The arrows indicate the four sources of gamma rays with energies over 100 TeV from within our galaxy (courtesy of the HAWC collaboration) imposed over a photo of the HAWC Observatory’s 300 large water tanks. The tanks contain sensitive light detectors that measure showers of particles produced by the gamma rays striking the atmosphere more than 10 miles overhead (courtesy of Jordan Goodman)

    New measurements confirm, to the highest energies yet explored, that the laws of physics hold no matter where you are or how fast you’re moving...

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    Theory that Challenges Einstein’s Physics could soon be put to the Test

    November 25, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Physics

    Theory that challenges Einstein's physics could soon be put to the test

    Scientists behind a theory that the speed of light is variable – and not constant as Einstein suggested – have made a prediction that could be tested.

    Scientists behind a theory that the speed of light is variable – and not constant as Einstein suggested – have made a prediction that could be tested. Einstein observed that the speed of light remains the same in any situation, and this meant that space and time could be different in different situations.The assumption that the speed of light is constant, and always has been, underpins many theories in physics, such as Einstein’s theory of general relativity. In particular, it plays a role in models of what happened in the very early universe, seconds after the Big Bang.

    But some researchers have suggested that the speed of light could have ...

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