Superluminality and Pair-Production

Abstract

When an information-carrying lightbeam is (legally) swept across a surface at more than c, simple signal-propagation arguments allow the observed behavior of the moving image (or "sprite") to include time-reversal and pair-production effects. A pair-production description also arises if we try to impose some common assumptions of general relativity onto the physics of an indirectly-radiating Eighteenth-Century "dark star". This result seems suspiciously similar to the modern concept of "Hawking radiation".