forbidden particles faster than light

Tachyons These are hypothetical particles that move faster than light. They were first proposed in the 1960s by physicist Gerald Feinberg. According to quantum field theory, tachyons have imaginary mass, which implies that they have a speed when they lose energy.

Some key properties of tachyons:

A new study gives us hope for the existence of tachyons: “A Covariant Quantum Field Theory of Tachyon Fields,” published in the journal Physical Review on July 9, 2024. Although their existence has been theorized before, Until now, all ideas were incompatible with Einstein’s special theory of relativity..

Signals of the future

People have always been extremely obsessed with time travel. classic films like Back to the future They make us travel not only in time, but also in our imagination. But is it possible to travel in time? According to a new study, it is possible for tachyons too. But do tachyons exist?

We don’t know, but theory tells us that they may exist.

According to a study conducted between the University of Warsaw and the University of Oxford, tachyons could travel through time and transfer information into the past. Andrzej Dragan, one of the authors, says that tachyons were considered “bad children” (the child is terrible) physicists. But they are no longer the same rebellious children. “Tachyons not only fit the theory, but also improve our understanding of their causal structure.”

Tachyons are the “bad children” of physics.

Until the date, There were at least three known arguments indicating the absence of tachyons in quantum theory.. First, The ground state of the tachyon field was considered unstable.which would mean that these superluminal particles would generate “avalanches”. Second, It was believed that changing the inertial observer would change the number of particles observed in his frame of reference.but the number of particles should not depend on the observer. Third, the energy of superluminal particles could take negative valuesHowever, a group of researchers recently noted that The difficulties with tachyons had a common cause. They found that the “boundary conditions” that influence physical processes include both the initial and final states of the system.

The consequences seem like science fiction: “To calculate the probability of a quantum process involving tachyons, it is necessary to know not only its past initial state, but also its future final state.“Only by taking this into account does the magic happen: Tachyons and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Are Compatible“It’s like online advertising: a simple method can solve your problems,” says Andrzej Dragan.

“To calculate the probability of a quantum process involving tachyons, it is necessary to know not only its past initial state, but also its future final state.”Andrzej Dragan

“The idea that the future can influence the present, rather than the present determining the future, is not new in physics. However, until now this point of view was at best an unorthodox interpretation of some quantum phenomena, and this time the theory itself led us to this conclusion. To accommodate tachyons, we had to expand the state space.“.

New quantum entanglement

The authors also expect that expanding the boundary conditions will have certain consequences: The theory introduces a new type of quantum entanglement that mixes up the past and future, something that does not exist in traditional particle theory.. The article also raises the question of whether the tachyons described in this way are simply a mathematical trick or whether it is possible to observe these particles in the future. According to the authors, Tachyons are not only possible, but are an important component of the spontaneous decay process that leads to the formation of matter.This hypothesis suggests that excitations of the Higgs field before spontaneous symmetry breaking could move in a vacuum at superluminal speeds.

Traditional quantum entanglement instantly connects two particles regardless of the distance between them.that is, the state of one instantly affects the state of the other. However, The new type of entanglement proposed in the paper mixes the past and the futuresuggesting that the final state of a system can influence its initial state and vice versa. This idea contradicts our usual understanding of causality and requires an expansion of the state space of quantum systems. And most importantly, as stated earlier, it allows tachyons to be integrated into modern physics, suggesting that they may be important for the formation of matter in the Universe.

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