What is faster than the speed of light?

Many things can travel faster than light. Like any electromagnetic wave, light's speed is dependant on the medium through which it is traveling. For example, in the Rowland Institute for Science in Cambridge, a few scientists managed to get light to travel at 38 miles per hour by making a pulse of it travel through a bunch of atoms named a "Bose-Einstein condensate" that were frozen down to a chilly fifty-billionths of a degree above absolute zero. My car can go faster than that. Well, I mean, if I had a car, it could go faster than that.

Now, more interestingly, fairly recently, there was an experiment that seemed to result in catapulting light itself faster than C, which is the speed of light in a vacuum. Scientists put a pulse of light in this chamber that was filled with some special cesium gas, and the pulse was pushed to a hefty 300 times light's normal speed. Yes, this is really weird.

187,000 miles/second is faster than the speed of light.

What you say?!! Nothing goes that fast? Doesn't matter. The question isn't "What travels faster than the speed of light?" or "What particle moves faster than light?", it's "What is faster than the speed of light?"

If the speed of light is n, n+1 is faster than the speed of light.


Alternative answer:

A particle traveling at 187,000 miles/second.

There exists a condition of quantum entanglement. Two photons may be "quantum entangled" if produced by the same particle interaction and emerging in opposite directions. They stay quantum entangled even when separated by vast distances (even light-years apart). Two quantum-entangled photons will make identical decisions when forced to choose among two equally probable pathways. They make the same decision at the same instant. If there is some unknown communication path between the two photons, it has been observed to function at least SEVEN TIMES the speed of light.

Another explanation, of course, is that the effect is completely instantaneous.

It is in fact possible to observe "things" traveling faster then light (even in a vacuum). Images, shadows, reflections, etc... are all allowed to break the light speed barrier, since they have no mass and can carry no information ftl.

For example, if I stand in my backyard and shine a powerful laser onto the moon, I can theoretically make a bright spot appear on the moon. If I quickly point the laser downward instead, the spot will appear on the ground almost instantaneously. Were the spot restricted by the speed of light, it would take several seconds for it to move from the moon to the earth.

Locations can also move faster then light, though the objects defining these locations might not. The spot where the two blades of a pair of scissors meet will travel significantly faster then either blade will. A long enough pair of scissors could certainly result in this spot moving faster then a photon.

Of course, you might argue that these things arn't really "things", or that their movement isn't really "movement". I'll not argue with you; find some other terminology and I'll consider using it. Even if they are illusionary, they still look like they're traveling faster then c.

Let's also not forget that under certain conditions light itself can seem to travel faster then light.