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Spectral lines of their light can be used to determine their redshift. For supernovae at redshift less than around 0.1, or light travel time less than 10 percent of the age of the universe, this gives a nearly linear distance–redshift relation due to Hubble's law. At larger distances, since the expansion rate of the universe has changed over ...
The speed at which light propagates through transparent materials, such as glass or air, is less than c; similarly, the speed of electromagnetic waves in wire cables is slower than c. The ratio between c and the speed v at which light travels in a material is called the refractive index n of the material ( n = c / v ).
It does not follow, however, that light travels a distance ct in a time t, as the red worldline illustrates. While it always moves locally at c, its time in transit (about 13 billion years) is not related to the distance traveled in any simple way, since the universe expands as the light beam traverses space and time. The distance traveled is ...
The Alcubierre drive ([alkuˈβjere]) is a speculative warp drive idea according to which a spacecraft could achieve apparent faster-than-light travel by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, under the assumption that a configurable energy-density field lower than that of vacuum (that is, negative mass) could be created.
The light path from m to M is entirely through air, while the light path from m to M' is mostly through a water-filled tube T. Lens L' compensates for the effects of the water on the focus. The light reflected back from the spherical mirrors is diverted by beam splitter g towards an eyepiece O.
Faster-than-light (superluminal or supercausal) travel and communication are the conjectural propagation of matter or information faster than the speed of light in vacuum (c). The special theory of relativity implies that only particles with zero rest mass (i.e., photons ) may travel at the speed of light, and that nothing may travel faster.
Once the other object has fallen through this horizon it can never return, and even light signals it sends will never reach the first object (at least so long as the space continues to expand exponentially). In the approximation that the expansion is exactly exponential, the horizon is static and remains a fixed physical distance away.
Formally, c is a conversion factor for changing the unit of time to the unit of space. [4] This makes it the only speed which does not depend either on the motion of an observer or a source of light and / or gravity. Thus, the speed of "light" is also the speed of gravitational waves, and further the speed of any massless particle.