You know that laser pointer the class clown used to drive the teacher nuts? The same kind that people use to make their cats batty? If you take that laser pointer and sweep it across the Earth's moon fast enough, you can actually generate spots that move faster than the speed of light.
Who's the class clown now?
Robert Nemiroff, a physics professor at Michigan Technological University, presented his curiosity-turned-practicality at the American Astronomical Society on Thursday. When a laser sweeps across the moon, the initial flash could expose unknown three-dimensional information about the dispersing object.
The flashes are nicknamed "photonic booms," since they are equivalent to sonic booms. Photonic booms are possibly visible on the moon, asteroids, shadows from gas clouds and on objects lit up by a pulsar. "And if detected, we could learn more about all of these objects," Nemiroff said.
Nemiroff's study was been accepted by Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.
"The concept, although not proven in practice, is quite intriguing," said Rosanne Di Stefano, a leading researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, according to Michigan Tech News.
The quick lunar photonic booms could be repeated and captured by a high-speed camera and used for study. Photonic booms are also evidenced farther out, like with Hubble's Variable Nebula in the constellation of Monoceros. The light created by the bright star "R Mon" across dust results in photonic booms that are visible for days or weeks, according to Michigan Tech News.
"Photonic booms happen around us quite frequently -- but they are always too brief to notice," said Nemiroff. "Out in the cosmos they last long enough to notice -- but nobody has thought to look for them!"
