The line in treasure planet: “Does and active galactic nucleus have superluminal jets?” Well, does it? what does this mean?

Question

Edit: does *an* active.
Sorry, typo. I’m tired

In: 5

Answer 1

It can, but technically no.

First of all, superluminal means faster than light but thats impossible (I’m assuming vacuum, otherwise you go down a rabbit hole of Cherenkov radiation).

Interestingly enough, it can appear superluminal. it depends on your angle of the beam and the true speed of the particles in the beam. To work this out you would have to do some calculations and with relativistic speed, and in extreme cases the apparent speed could reach velocities of 10x the speed of light.