{"id":89950,"date":"2019-04-25T10:23:01","date_gmt":"2019-04-25T17:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/extracting-something-from-nothing-a-bright-glow-from-empty-space"},"modified":"2019-04-25T10:23:01","modified_gmt":"2019-04-25T17:23:01","slug":"extracting-something-from-nothing-a-bright-glow-from-empty-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/extracting-something-from-nothing-a-bright-glow-from-empty-space","title":{"rendered":"Extracting something from nothing: A bright glow from empty space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/extracting-something-from-nothing-a-bright-glow-from-empty-space2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Particles travelling through empty space can emit bright flashes of gamma rays by interacting with the quantum vacuum, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Strathclyde.<\/p>\n<p>It has long been known that charged particles, such as electrons and protons, produce the electromagnetic equivalent of a sonic boom when their speeds exceed that of photons in the surrounding medium. This effect, known as Cherenkov emission, is responsible for the characteristic blue glow from water in a nuclear reactor, and is used to detect particles at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.<\/p>\n<p>According to Einstein, nothing can travel faster than light in vacuum. Because of this, it is usually assumed that the Cherenkov emission cannot occur in vacuum. But according to <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/quantum+theory\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">quantum theory<\/a>, the vacuum itself is packed full of \u201cvirtual particles\u201d, which move momentarily in and out of existence.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-04-bright-space.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;\">Read more<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Particles travelling through empty space can emit bright flashes of gamma rays by interacting with the quantum vacuum, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Strathclyde. It has long been known that charged particles, such as electrons and protons, produce the electromagnetic equivalent of a sonic boom when their speeds exceed [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873,48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nuclear-energy","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89950\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}