Astrophysicists Jon Hakkila of the College of Charleston and Robert Nemiroff of the Michigan Technological University have published research indicating that blasts that create gamma-ray bursts may actually exceed the speed of light in surrounding gas clouds, but do so without violating Einstein's theory of relativity.

Hakkila and Nemiroff propose that such superluminal jets could create the time-reversibility seen in gamma-ray burst light curves. These proposed jets, however, do not violate the Einstein's relativity because they only move faster than light does through the jet medium, not faster than light through vacuum.

Hakkila says that a good way to visualize this superluminal motion is to imagine someone on one side of a pond skipping a stone across the water in your direction. The frequently-hopping stone moves through the air between hops faster than the waves it generates move through water.

Hakkila says you would see waves created by each skip of the approaching stone in reverse order, with waves from the most recent skip arriving first and those from the initial skip arriving last.

This superluminal blast explanation retains many characteristics of accepted gamma-ray burst jet models, Hakkila says.

Nemiroff adds, however, that their proposed scenario involves Cherenkov radiation, a type of light created by superluminal motion that was not previously thought to be important in generating the light curves of gamma-ray bursts.

"Standard gamma-ray burst models have neglected time-reversible light curve properties," Hakkila says. "Superluminal jet motion accounts for these properties while retaining a great many standard model features."

Research Report: "Time-Reversed Gamma-Ray Burst Light Curve Characteristics as Transitions between Subluminal and Superluminal Motion"

Related Links
Michigan Technological University
Stellar Chemistry, The Universe And All Within It

Tweet

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The Space Media Network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceMediaNetwork Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceMediaNetwork Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only

Pulsating gamma rays from neutron star rotating 707 times a second
Hannover, Germany (SPX) Sep 23, 2019
An international research team led by the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, AEI) in Hannover has discovered that the radio pulsar J0952-0607 also emits pulsed gamma radiation. J0952-0607 spins 707 times in one second and is 2nd in the list of rapidly rotating neutron stars. By analyzing about 8.5 years worth of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, LOFAR radio observations from the past two years, observations from two large optical telescopes, ... read more