This bizarre object is FASTER than light? What did NASA Hubble Space Telescope catch? (2024)

On Earth, we have created some really fast objects. For instance, the speed of a bullet out of a gun can be as high as 4,200 kilometers per hour, which is three times the speed of sound. But it is not even the fastest thing. The fastest man-made object would be the NASA Parker Solar Probe spacecraft which reached a speed of 535,000 kilometers per hour using the Sun's gravity! Now, that is fast. But you would be surprised to know that it is just 0.05% of the speed of light (300,000 kilometers per second). So, you can imagine just how fast light really is. And till now, it was surmised that nothing can travel faster than light. But the NASA Hubble Space Telescope spotted and measured a rare object which is 7 times faster than the speed of light. How could this be? Read on to find out the truth.

What did the NASA Hubble Space Telescope actually see

This extremely unique event took place in 2017. Astronomers witnessed the collision of two neutron stars. To give you an idea of just how rare this event is, you should know that only one in a thousand stars becomes a neutron star. And two such stars to come in close proximity and collide against each other is nothing short of a miraculous event. But in 2017 this is exactly what happened.

The jet radiation that emerged from that collision was so powerful that back then, NASA had compared it to a supernova explosion itself. But that is not the most shocking thing. These jets are also known as experimental signatures of Quark and Gillions in particle physics. When the jet from this particular event, GW170817, was measured using the NASA Hubble Space Telescope, the telescope's findings were something that was impossible. It said that the jet moved 7 times faster than the speed of light.

Can anything move faster than light?

But this was a problem. A big problem. According to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, nothing can actually travel faster than light. And yes, Einstein was right.

Later studies revealed that this faster than speed of light object was only an illusion! This happened because the direction of the jet was approaching the Earth directly nearly at the speed of light. Because of that, the light it emitted later had a shorter distance to go. In simple terms, the light was simply chasing its tail, and this would not be apparent to an observer on Earth who may find the jet traveling at a speed exceeding that of light. This illusion is known as the superluminal motion illusion.