Quote:
Quote by: Thanatos  As fast as light? Faster? Imagine a shadow puppet. Darkness has a speed that is directly related to how fast you wiggle your fingers. Imagine a bigger shadow puppet using a screen that's a bit bigger, like the moon and some sort of giant laser projector that would probably melt my hands, but continue with the thought experiment anyway. I'll wear gloves for this shadow puppet session.
If I flicked my fingers would it be possible to make a wave of darkness travel faster than the speed of light? |
The wave of darkness you're talking about is a shadow. If we define a shadow as the darkness resulting from the obstruction of a light source, then a shadow may only travel
at the speed of light. When you put your hand in the way of a laser, the residual light beam would still be travelling toward the moon (in your example), so it would take about a second for the last of the beam to reach the moon. Since the last of the beam is followed by shadow, the shadow will get there in about a second.