Strange light phenomena

In an experiment in 2001, light was slowed to a speed as slow as a car through a cooling method with lasers and quantum “magic.” A beam of light was able to travel at 60 km per hour through a cloud of super-cold atoms called optical molasses.

Light could circulate through an avenue of optical molasses without exceeding the speed limit, of course this was only achieved in super controlled conditions within a laboratory, but even in a much more abundant transparent medium like water, light goes slow enough for very strange things to happen when something goes faster than it.

For example, in a nuclear reactor, the core, which is where the radioactive material is, is usually submerged in water, this is to control its temperature, to make the nuclear reaction more efficient, moderating the speed of the neutrons it emits, and to protect the personnel who operate it from radiation. The products of radioactive decay are typically alpha particles, neutrons, beta particles, and neutrinos.

Alpha particles, which are a small group of two protons and two neutrons, and loose neutrons, since they have a lot of mass, do not move as easily or as fast, but beta particles, which are electrons and positrons, and neutrinos are much smaller and almost have no mass, which means that it does not take much energy to send them flying at speeds very close to that of light in a vacuum.

Imagine, you have a radioactive nucleus emitting particles at speeds very close to the speed of light C, but it is submerged in water, which is a medium that limits the speed of light to 75% of C, that is, you have particles that have mass traveling faster than light in that medium, at least for a few centimeters until the particles lose their energy between the water molecules.

The animation above is of a reactor submerged in water and look what happens when the moderator bars are removed to start the chain reaction, by splitting or fusing the atoms of heavy elements such as uranium, the nucleus emits electrons and positrons that go at speeds close to 90% C, but also neutrinos that are even lighter and can reach speeds of more than 99% C, and the water around the nucleus shines with this beautiful and ghostly blue color.

This is how it works, when a charged particle like an electron passes at high speed between the water molecules, it interacts with them, reorienting them with its electrical charge as if it were a famous person crossing a crowd and when the water molecules lose interest and return to their original state, they shine, emitting light that travels through the water at a speed of 75% of what it would have in a vacuum.

As the electron travels faster, about 90% of the speed of light in a vacuum, when passing between the water molecules, it creates a cone of light similar to that of the shock waves of a supersonic airplane. The plane is faster than the sound it produces and this causes the sound waves it produces to pile up, becoming a shock wave. The high-speed electron does the same with the light produced by the water molecules that find its way and in the same way the waves of light pile up, adding their light to create that blue glow around the nucleus, this is called Cherenkov light after the Soviet physicist who discovered how it was generated.

The above is the Super Kamiojande, a huge neutrino detector that has been operating inside a mountain in Japan since 1996. It is a cylindrical tank 40 m high by 40 m in diameter that has a capacity of 50,000 tons of water. Its walls, ceiling and floor are covered by more than 11,000 photomultiplier tubes that serve to detect the faintest Cherenkov glow and each of these tubes is so sensitive that it could detect the light of a candle on the surface of the Moon.

The supernova explosions that occurred millions of years ago emitted neutrinos and some of those neutrinos after millions of years arrived here traveling at a speed of more than 99% C, they are so small that at this very moment 100 billion neutrinos are passing through your body without interacting with any of your atoms and you don't realize it, they can easily cross our planet from side to side without colliding with a single atom in their path, but a very small number of them when crossing the mountain where the Super Kamiojande is will reach the water tank and collide with a molecule producing Cherenkov light.

The detectors record the three-dimensional shape of the cone of light it produces and so the Super Kamiojande scientists will know exactly what direction that neutrino came from and how much energy it had. Sometimes space telescopes get all the attention, but the Super Kamiojande has already produced two Nobel Prize winners. Now that you know that the speed of light depends on the medium and that 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second, my work here is done.

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