UPDATE January 27, 2022: We removed our claim that the static electric field would move faster than light in a dielectric medium, like glass. The field presumably can move faster than light in a zone where the polarization capacity of the medium is "saturated". We do not know currently how far this zone extends.
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We have already argued that the local speed of light around a black hole does not set any speed limit for a falling spherical shell. Nor does it restrict the speed of a very large falling mass.
The logical guess is that the universal speed limit of physics is the speed of light in the underlying true geometry of spacetime: the Minkowski space.
An electron which moves faster than the local speed of light in water produces blue Cherenkov radiation. An analogous effect must happen in gravity if a point mass M speeds past the local speed of light.
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