Philip Perry | Big Think
Modern physics rests on the foundational notion that the speed of light is a constant, which in a vacuum is 186,000 miles per second (299,792 km/s). Einstein established this within his theory of general relativity, first developed in 1906 when he was just 26 years-old. But what if it doesn’t? A few albeit controversial incidents in recent years challenge the idea that light always travels at a constant speed. And in fact, we’ve known for a long time that there are several phenomena that travel faster than light, without violating the theory of relativity.
For instance, whereas traveling faster than sound creates a sonic boom, traveling faster than light creates a “luminal boom.” Russian scientist Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov discovered this in 1934, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1958. Cherenkov radiation can be observed in the core of a nuclear reactor. When the core is submerged in water to cool it, electrons move through the water faster than the speed of light, causing a luminal boom.
