"The joke is that the speed of light really is a cosmic law; to the best of our understanding, nothing can travel faster than light. Generations of Star Trek notwithstanding, this restriction isn't just some engineering limit, like the way the speed of sound used to be unsurpassable for airplanes (the phrase sound barrier was popular in sci-fi movies when I was a kid). The speed of light is the ultimate physical speed limit, a parameter woven into the fabric of the universe itself."
"That year a star in the constellation of Perseus blazed brilliantly into view; astronomers dubbed it GK Persei. Ironically called a novashort for nova stella, or new starit's actually what occurs when a dead white dwarf star accumulates enough matter on its surface that the material catastrophically fuses. This creates an immensely powerful explosion that blasts away matter at very high speeds. The nova got very bright and was observed by many astronomers at the time."
The speed of light functions as the universe's ultimate physical speed limit; nothing can exceed a photon’s velocity. A 1901 event in Perseus, GK Persei, brightened when a white dwarf accumulated enough surface matter to trigger catastrophic fusion. That fusion produced an immense explosion that blasted material away at very high speeds, creating a luminous shell. Observers recorded the nova's brightness and surrounding glowing material. German researcher Jacobus Kapteyn noticed that the shell appeared to be expanding, producing apparent superluminal motion that baffled astronomers given the cosmic speed limit.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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