b12958 (09/02/82)
Reply to Ned Horvath (and for anyone else): Synchrotron radiation is NOT "emitted by particles when they try to go faster than the speed of light." It is emitted, or radiated by charged particles when they undergo acceleration, usually radially acceleration similar to that in National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven Nat'l Laboratory. It is Cerenkov radiation which is emitted or radiated by charged particles that are going faster than the speed of light, BUT this is only when the particles are traveling faster than the speed of light in a medium which has an index of refraction > 1.0. The particles will still be traveling with velocity less than the speed of light in vacuum, which is, of course, the ultimate limit in speed and can only be acheived by massless particles such as photons and all the types of neutrinos (providing that they also have zero rest mass).