English

Lights Illuminate Surfaces Superluminally

Popular Physics 2016-06-22 v1

Abstract

When a light bulb is turned on, light moves away from it at speed cc, by definition. When light from this bulb illuminates a surface, however, this illumination front is not constrained to move at speed cc. A simple proof is given that this illumination front always moves {\it faster} than cc. Generalized, when any compact light source itself varies, this information spreads across all of the surfaces it illuminates at speeds faster than light.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1506.02643,
  title  = {Lights Illuminate Surfaces Superluminally},
  author = {Robert J. Nemiroff and Qi Zhong and Elias Lilleskov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.02643},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

5 pages, 1 figure, comments welcome

R2 v1 2026-06-22T09:49:33.641Z