Faster Than the Speed of Light by Lucius Parhelion

And these are mapped onto the spacetime diagram. Spacetime is filled with events ranging from the cosmically powerful and violent, like the supernova explosion of a distant star, or the mundane, such as the cracking of an egg on your kitchen floor.

That all hinges on the concept that puts the 'relative' into 'special relativity.'Ī common tool used to explain special relativity is the spacetime diagram. But, why would this lead to backward time travel? But, imagine an anti-mass particle like a tachyon, its lowest energy state would see it speeding at c. This should mean that nothing can travel faster than light. One of the most important and meaningful results from Einstein’s theory of special relativity is the establishing universal speed limit of c the speed of light in a vacuum.Įinstein suggested that as an object approaches c its mass becomes near-infinite, as does the energy required to accelerate it. But, with tachyons, as energy is taken away, their speed increases. One of the key differences between these particle types is as energy is added to bradyons, they speed up. This would lead to two types of particles existing in the universe bradyons that travel slower than light and compose all the matter we see around us, and tachyons traveling faster than light, according to the University of Pittsburgh (opens in new tab). Feinberg posited that tachyonic particles would arise from a quantum field with “imaginary mass” explaining why the first populate of special relativity doesn’t restrain their velocity. The term 'tachyon' first entered scientific literature in 1967, in a paper entitled ' Possibility of faster-than-light particles (opens in new tab)' by Columbia University physicist Gerald Feinberg.

Faster Than the Speed of Light by Lucius Parhelion