A
Amaris
Guest
Whaa....??? Supernovas don't travel at the speed of light.
For this one, I just assume some techno subspace reason like was given in STVI. I wouldn't have minded if one was given.
The particles that make up the light from a supernova move at the speed of light, including those delightful Gamma rays. The ejecta can move anywhere from 9,000 to 25,000 miles per second. It can have some good distance, too, before it begins to really slow down.
It doesn't slow down, it just spreads out more and more with distance until it's effectively not there.
In that instance I was referring to the shockwave. According to the article in the second link:
Wikipedia said:The shock continuously slows down over time as it sweeps up the ambient medium, but it can expand over hundreds of thousands of years and over tens of parsecs before its speed falls below the local sound speed.
Whether that's entirely accurate or not, I'm not certain. I was more interested in the speed of the ejecta and such.