How To Go Faster Than Light Speed (Seriously…) 

Nuclear reactors are cool. This might be the coolest thing about them. Thanks for watching! I hope I've earned your like and subscription. If you'd like to help me make videos like this one, check out the link to the Patreon in the description!

Gotta love how Joe just casually sits atop a nuclear reactor

As a particle physicist, I appreciate this video. Cherenkov radiation can be used to measure the speed of a high energy particle traveling through a medium as well as to distinguish types of particles such as electron vs muon.

to anyone wondering how joe is still safe; the water between him the the rods is protecting him, even if he was in the water he would be alright, there's more than actually needed, to be extra safe

This is why I quite like 'Speed of Causality' for light speed in a vacuum. I think its clearer, or at least gets people asking the right questions.

I've seen the Cherenkov effect myself, on top of a pool of water with a small reactor core below too. It's beautiful. But I thought it had to do with neutrons shooting into the water, so you've corrected this mistake in my mind. Thank you. A shockwave of light, that's awesome!

When I was a kid, my friend Todd used to steal Red Bull from his dad and we would ride our bikes faster than the speed of light. We had fun observing the relativistic effects as our velocity increased. Time always seemed to fly by. We'd get started in the afternoon, and by the time we got home, dinner had been over 40 years ago. Those were good times.

Cherenkov radiation in a spent fuel pool is genuinely one of the most beautiful things ive seen, truly unforgettable

I absolutely love that you also showcase how chill you can be around a nuclear reactor. Yes, it's small, but ALSO it's built such that you can absolutely sit right there and be perfectly fine, even if you did fall in. I'm also giggling a lot, because the first time I learned about Cherenkov radiation was after it was mentioned a little (possibly infamous) article called "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" by Larry Niven...

this is sure the best time to be living in, just think how much information we normal people have access to, which would be a dream for a scientists back then, thank you for explaining such a complex thing in a very easy way

Great video, Dr. Joe!!! Just one thing: at 8:27 it's implied that you can use Cherenkov radiation to detect neutrinos, but technically neutrinos can't produce Cherenkov radiation because they have no charge. The neutrino has to decay in other particles in order to be able to produce Cherenkov radiation.

Pretty enlightening.

One of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Going to a nuclear power plant while studying Physics at university. Cherenkov radiation makes all the water light up. Really magical.

9:35 what did he say? Shedding light. Oh. Shedding. That's not what I heard at first.

Superbly well explained. Well done😊

9:41 as a fellow dude i can confirm we all wanted to jump into it

Thanks for giving me that '"click" Oh, I get it now!' moment. Such a great feeling

Thank you so much! I have said this before but everything having to do with light/EM-radiation and colours and wave-physics is my all favourite! I had heard all the false explanations before and realized that they couldn't be true but never knew the true explanation, thanks again for that! And what a great addition it was to talk about the Cherenkov detector used to study the cosmic high-energy particles. Keep up the good work Joe and team

Great, just great visuals. Thank you for the constant quality!!

The reason my brain isnt hurting is because youve done an excellent job at explaining it

I'd need to watch it twice or even thrice to understand it better. Also the analogies were great especially the duck going at turbo speed and the ripples behind it bunching together. Something just clicked in my head then. (English is not my native language so my bad if something feels off in my wording) I love these videos.

I love these quirks of physics!

Learned so much from this video. Thanks.

This is really cool! I knew about Cherenkov detectors (although not necessarily by that name) and how they give off light when particles pass through the water, but I'd never had a detailed explanation of *how* and *why*!

I think we should call it a superluminal shock wave, it sound cooler than photonic boom, and its also a better description of what is actually happening

Such an amazing episode!

So clearly explained! Thanks 🙂

I’d love to see a collaboration with Be Smart and PBS space time.

The trick is not going faster than c. The trick is slowing down light in water...

WOW, EPIC video!!! Thank You!

You have the most amazingly good job - and you're incredibly good at it too. Staying curious.

Excellent video. It's astonishing how you (all of you, include the animators!) succeed to explain such complicated issues.

At 6:02 the positive partial charges of water are at the hydrogen atoms. Wouldn't the molecules turn their positive parts (hydrogen) to the passing electron (which is negative).

Great video Thank you

Thanks for your sharing

A video on neutrino detection would be awesome! Great video btw.

Like the video, one quick correction would be the graphic at 6:00 is slightly off, the positive end of water is the hydrogens, so that's the thing that would be attracted to the negative electron, not the oxygen as is shown.

Thanks for this bro.

This was an excellent explanation of light and Cherenkov radiation!

I like that since it's 2023 it's completely acceptable to casually use stock death metal music in your science education video

But Joe, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light!

Excellent video.

Great video thank you 🙏🏻

This Danish lady professor slowed down light so much you could walk past it, Joe. I don't think this is what people have in mind when they talk about "traveling" faster than the speed of light 😀

Imaging going faster than light speed and not even be able to flex about breaking the laws of physics

Whoa dude. Youre blowing my mind right now

Great video!

sience like this always gets me hyped up like a jet turbine

This video has the best clickable but not clickbait title in the history of RU-vid! It's immensely provocative and on its face, seems easily disprovable and yet it's 100% accurate and scientifically provable. Prodigious! You are clearly a man of sagacity and wit. 😎

I just learned so much!

Just found your channel from the rainbow video and have commenced my weeklong binge of the backlog. Great stuff keep up the great work Joe!

Wanted to know that thanks, actually much more straight forward than I expected

That's the warp core

One interesting thing to think about is that the Cherenkov effect in case of the nuclear reactor is due to the interaction of the charged particle and the water molecules and the subsequent "piling up of the ripples of light", then how do the Cherenkov detectors work in case of neutrinos which do not interact with matter? Actually, they DO interact with matter, albeit rarely. The neutrinos interact through weak force which is very short range. And since these neutrinos are high energy as well, one can imagine the rarity of these interactions.

amazing I never knew about this awesome!

Great video. I had no idea this is how Neutrino detectors work.

I feel clickbaited

Would the temperature of the water affect the color? I love how out of the entire spectrum it just happens to have the right energy to be bluish white instead of most of the spectrum being not visible.

I'd love it for Joe to explain more about microcurrent in a longer form video! The foreo bear explaination was wonderful

Great video 👍😃.

Hey! Great video! I have 2 questions: 1. In the portion where you explain Cherenkov radiation with electrons (5:58 to 6:25) the water molecules are re-orienting themselves due to the electric field the electron is giving off. I was just wondering whether the re-orientation of the water molecules was correct, since the e- is negative, and the water molecule being polar, the positive side (Hydrogen side) would be facing the e- as it went by. In the video the negative side of the water (2 pairs of e- on the O) face the e- as it goes by. Let me know if I am wrong or if it is due to other facotrs, such as the magnetic field the moving charge produces, or perhaps the field the e- produces is very small compared to the field the other water molecules produce and so it is a relativley small change etc. 2. Lastly, I don't fully understand why the neutrinos produce Cherenkov radiation. I understand the e- doing it, since it interacts with the Electromagnetic force with it's neighbours (water), producing EM waves. However, as you stated in the video, neutrinos don't interact electromagnetically (since they are neutral charge), therefore I don't see how they can produce light. Perhaps it is a different sort of Cherenkov radiation, produced by other mechanisms such as the weak force, which eventually produces EM waves (Cherenkov radiation) Many thanks, again great video I enjoyed it alot!

Can't help but imagine you oops-ing right into that reactor.

Finally needed a tutorial on this.

Great video, that glow is so cool and now I have a better idea of how those giant detectors work.

A light-boom?🤔🧐 Makes sense. Also, I never new there was anything that could move faster than the speed of light. That’s pretty cool.

To go faster than the speed of light you just need to be r34 artist

Thank you for teaching us about Cherenkov "thingies".

Today I learned more about light. Thank you.

The speed of light is already variable.

I simply just run really fast.

This is fascinating 👍

Now that is fascinating!

Really like to watch your videos

Like how you went full glowing Mr Burns at the end there! Lol

Lol, you completely blew my mind. I thougt i was not possible

I like this 👍🏻👍🏻

That a channel like this has almost 5 million subscribers makes me happy

Fascinating!

thank's hank ❤

Excellent work... I started this video thinking "'faster than light'? I don't (expletive deleted) think so!" and finished it thinking "Oh... so that's why neutrino detectors are in gigantic buckets of water".

The opening scene is soo satisfying...

Thanks bro

The explanation is already very good and thorough for a short RU-vid video, but the effect that of the light slowing down in a medium is only almost right. Indeed the electromagnetic wave tugs on the (mostly) electrons in the material, which moves along with the light and therefore, being an oscillating charge, creates its own wave, called a polarization wave. But then, this newly created field doesn't "tug" on the other field, because ligth does not actually interact with light. Instead, basically create a moving interference pattern, which is the light we observe going through the medium. The reason that the final wave is slower than the speed of light in vacuum is that the electrons (and other charged particles) have mass and therefore don't respond instantly. So the polarization wave therefore laggs behind the original wave as well.

Nice.

Marie Curie - Physicist/ GLOWING PERSONALITY Had me dead 😂😂 7:55

Super Nice

I wish I had you as a science teacher! ❤

Really happy that I randomly landed on this video.😊

1:24 Aw man.... Yeah, you got me, I implicitly added "in a vacuum" to the title. Lame.

Of course matter travelling faster than the speed of light IS a tremendous teaser, but tbh... ...you already had me just with the cool, blue glow. 🤗

Thanks for shedding light on weird physics, Joe

Also worth mentioning the Askaryan effect. Very much related. Just as interesting.

the swan segment was good. this pleases me

this is what i was searching for my teachers would n't be able to explain my curiosity hats off to Joe Thank you !

I had not understood the magnetic and electrical fields that make us light until seeing this video!

Like a Shockwave with the speed of sound, but with the speed of light. Love it. Also love when you explain something and i get excited because it makes sense, then say "if your brain hurts right now its okay." When my brain isnt hurting!

Another great video. Thanks. However, I think your animation of an electron passing through a bunch of water molecules was slightly wrong. As the electron passed, you showed each molecule rotating so that its oxygen side was closer to the electron. I think the torque on the dipole would actually turn the hydrogen side towards the electron.

0:09 IN THIS VIDEO, I WILL GO DIVING IN A ACTIVE NUCLEAR POOL - Mrbeast

Does light instantly get back up to speed after leaving the medium? Or is the speed "slowly" building up to lightspeed in the vacuum?

Wow. That "celebrity walking through a crowd" analogy was fantastic!