Physicists have found something (which is nothing) that can move faster than light
For the first time, physicists have observed that ‘holes’ in light can move faster than the light itself.
They’re known as phase singularities or optical vortices, and since the 1970s, scientists have predicted that, just as eddies in a river can move faster than the flowing water around them, so too can whirlpools in a wave of light outrun the light they’re embedded within.
This does not break relativity, which states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. That’s because the vortices carry no mass, energy, or information, and their motion is based on the evolving geometry of the wave pattern rather than any physical motion through space.
However, capturing this phenomenon in action has been difficult to accomplish because it unfolds on extremely small scales of space and time. The achievement is a triumph of electron microscopy. [Continue reading…]