User blog comment:The Milkman/The Writing of the Ending/@comment-4947746-20120529225314/@comment-4947746-20120530230017

As Xaero said, I am fairly sure the point to point lights represent a signal of some sort, whereas the cicles represent blast radii.

A signal cannot be sent faster than light according to the mass effect lore, neither can an explosion. So whichever of those is broadcast, the normandy and other ships could easily escape it.

The conduits seem to use wormhole/spacetime distortion based ftl (though the codex says they use another method, the method described in the codex violates relativity so is incorrect presumably), and as such a signal can be sent from relay to relay faster than light, but once it got to broadcasting the signal in the local area, it would be restriced to light speed or slower.

Anyway, as such, any ship which has enough time to notice the explosion is able to escape it by going ftl, and joker not doing so is a plot error, unless the signal/explosion itself is going ftl, in which case that is a plot and lore error.