This stream of mysterious energy particles comes from 140 million light-years, where a serious cosmic disaster occurred. Two neutron stars with the mass of the sun collided violently, and this stream of mysterious energy particles is rushing towards the earth It was the violent explosion caused by this neutron star collision. This is also the first time humans have detected gravitational waves from the merger of neutron stars rather than black holes. In all-round tracking observations, astronomers found that the flying speed of these particles was seven times the speed of light. Intuition tells us that this is impossible. Although there are a few people who believe that superluminous motion does exist, scientists have finally discovered after repeated calculations that it is actually an illusion, a phantom called “optical superluminous motion”, and its principle Pretty neat.
The phenomenon of “optical superluminous motion” occasionally occurs in the universe, mostly in celestial bodies or celestial events that can produce near-light-speed jets. The cause of the illusion has to do with the speed and direction of the particles, which are flying extremely fast. Taking GW170817 as an example, the flying speed of the particles it produces reaches 99.97% of the speed of light. The consequence of this speed is that when some of them are coming towards the earth, because the distance from the earth continues to shorten, the time it takes for each flash of light we see to reach the earth will continue to shorten. In this way, if we observe these particles and calculate their moving speed, we mistakenly think that the distance between these particles and the earth is constant.
Therefore, the time interval of flashes will be underestimated, and their flight speeds will be overestimated, thinking that they are moving at several times the speed of light. In short, this superluminal event in the universe was judged to be an “illusion”. The reason why scientists made this judgment is that similar faster-than-light illusions have occurred before. So so far, Einstein’s theory of relativity has been verified once again. But no matter what, scientists always believe that with the rapid development of human beings, it will not take long to find the existence of faster-than-light matter in the universe, and the exploration of the universe will also move to a new level!