Talk:Tachyon

Could anyone add a link to the name for particles at sub-luminal speeds? I forgot what the name was. -- Redge 11:54, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

---

A tachyon might be a magnetic monopole. Many theoretical searches for magnetic monopoles have concluded they may not exist thanks to them breaking multiple physical laws (conservation of energy for one). It seems fashionable to attribute to tachyons anything proven to be impossible.

Can anyone verify this? I removed it as it sounds highly dubious to me; in any case, it is too vague.

We might also need discussion about the wave front effect, virtual particles, and how exactly causality is violated if tachyons exist (which might as well go into the causality link.)

-- CYD

Hmmm... yes, it's a bit like saying "A unicorn might be like a fairy"... one fanciful thing being compared to another. Losing it doesn't hurt the article - good call. - MMGB

You MIGHT have magnetic monopoles which are also tachyons, but it's even closer to say that you might have unicorns which are also infrared. -- CIM

---

I think the subject of tachyons is a rather delicate matter, more delicate than perhaps this article presents. That is, I changed "hypothetical" to "theoretical," in an attempt to distinguish between the theory and practice without the ladened hyperbole' (is that a fair description?). It seems to me that tachyons are quite a bit deeper than "fanciful things," where their existence may even end up being necessary in order to explain any number of real phenomena (see entanglement).

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-ph/pdf/9905/9905454.pdf

I am considering revamping this page a fair amount.

---

Considering that superpartners and even the Higgs are currently hypothetical particles, this adjective implies no opprobrium. If a particle exists "real" or "physical"; if it doesn't it's "fictional" or "unphysical"; if we don't know yet it's "hypothetical". In fact, "theoretical particle" is an oxymoron, because theories are made of ideas, not particles. "Theoretical particle physics" is not the physics of theoretical particles!

It should be said rather strongly that the hypothesis that tachyons exist as particles, and are able to interact with ordinary matter, is very hard to entertain, unless you throw away one of the main principles of particle theory. It would introduce logical paradoxes, that is self-contradictions, unless supplemented by some clever principle which no-one has yet been able to incorporate in a coherent way.

As of now there is no compelling, or even half-compelling, reason to try. Quantum entanglement does not require tachyons, since no energy or information is exchanged faster than c. The paper cited above from the 'arxiv' is on "superbradyons", not strictly tachyons, and is highly speculative. All the references are to the author's own previous work, i.e. no-one else works on this.

Also, the (now removed) link to Florentin Smarandache does not illuminate the topic, as far as I can see, since that page does not mention tachyons. However, see http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/SmarandacheHypothesis.html .

Tdent 19:00, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

The infamous George Sudarshan

I nixed the comment in the introductory paragraph about George Sudarshan. I hate to play the card-carrying obnoxious physicist, but any remark like "is considered to be" is weasel terminology. The only reason it could belong in the introduction is if a fuller description followed below, with proper citations to both original journal articles and later retrospectives.

A couple months ago, an anonymous user (82.68.88.6) added a similar comment, "Discovery of tachyons is attributed to Indian scientist George Sudarshan who was nominated for the Nobel Prize six times." IMNSHO, this sounds like gushing from a partisan supporter—never mind that we shouldn't speak about the discovery of a hypothetical particle. The article on Sudarshan himself seems similarly toned; a good POV shakedown may be in order.

Anville 17:04, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

---

This is probably misplaced, but as some humans have persistently claimed to experience precognition, that is, knowing something is going to happen before it happens, this is a kind of experimental verification of the existence of tachyons. Indeed, I have displayed precognition (with several witnesses present) and as someone with a logical/scientific perspective on reality, only tachyons seem capable of explaining this phenomenon.

I anticipate that this will be lumped in with discussion of unicorns, but frankly, I have verified the existence of human precognition to myself. Given this, the fact that tachyons violate causality is precisely why I am interested in them and not in the least a reason to discard a theory.

jestingrabbit@hotmail.com

(this is not a jest).