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I think the leading edge of the light stretches several times in travel. In the first case, the initial trailing edge is created, but after it hits the mirror, overlapping light pulses lengthen the existing distance between the peak and the leading edge of light cumulatively as it passes its previous path. Assuming the light has an extremely nominal fade, my guess is that when the light first rebounds off of the mirror, light intensity is doubled, and the trailing edge stretches accordingly, then it advances one step and its intensity is 2x original plus the original, then it advances again, and is 2x original plus 2x original, then 2x original plus 3x original, and so on until it hits the peak..then its whatever the intensity is plus the peak, and this pattern continues to follow throw the trailing edge of the light until it finally hits the beginning of where the light came out of. As the intensity of light increase from the mirror to the source, the leading edge gets further ahead of the peak. Creating the illusion of the leading edge going back in time. But in fact, it just accelerated faster and faster until the accelerated speed it traveled at seemed to exceed the average speed. think of it this way, if you had a sensor checking tire passes to determine if someone is going the speed limit, someone who is speeding up can eventually even out at a legal average speed..but as they are accellerating and passing the sensors, it can look like the car is actually moving faster than that average speed and provide a false "speeding" result. Now imagine lining the car's entire drive path with these sensors. How it would look in relative speed if the front of the car actually started to stretch as it got faster and faster. As you got to the later sensors, they should be telling you that the car is traveling faster than the previous sensors. Because the fact that the car is stretching makes the tires hit the later sensors faster than they would hit the earlier sensors. Now if you were to add all those speeds up as they were registered by the sensors, it should demonstrate that you arrived before you should have been able to.