Comic #3868: superluminal

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Panel 1: "Imagine you have a giant spotlight that you aim at a screen 50 trillion miles away and a trillion miles wide."

Panel 2: "The spotlight's beam is one degree wide, narrowing out to reach the width of the screen."

Panel 3: "You flick your hand in front of the spotlight."

Panel 4: "Your hand crosses the beam in one second, and the shadow it casts transmits toward the giant screen."

Panel 5: "The shadow must therefore also cross the trillion mile wide screen in one second."

Panel 6: "Thus, the shadow 'moves' far faster than the speed of light."

Panel 7: "Of course, none of the photons go faster than light. Your hand doesn't move faster than light, nor does the screen."

Panel 8: "Real stuff, like us, is stuck behind a cosmic speed limit. The shadows of reality go as fast as they like."

Panel 9: "I think I would wiggle my fingers so a giant finger-man would run across the screen."

Panel 10: "One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

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