Theoretical Physics [OT thread]

[dmm]

quote:

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Originally posted by Dracus:
The Japanese discovered 2 years ago a particle that in it's natural state travels faster then the speed of light

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Maybe it travels faster than light in air? That's quite possible, and quite common. Neutrinos do that, and they constantly bombard us, and the Japanese have been working on some cool neutrino experiments for the Last few years. Maybe you're thinking of that? Particles are allowed to exceed the "local speed limit" which is always less than c. When they do, they give off forward-directed light known as Cerenkov radiation, which slows them down until they're below the local speed limit.

[a philistine]

quote:

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Originally posted by Dracus:
The Japanese discovered 2 years ago a particle that in it's natural state travels faster then the speed of light. Everything on the Earth is being bombard by this particle as it moves through space. I can't remember what they called it. I will try to locate the article. It has been a year since I read it.

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"Tachyon" is a name which has been given to hypothetical particles which always travel faster than light. They can never travel slower than the speed of light.

I believe that there has been no "proof" of the existence of tachyons, although there has been a reported sighting in the 70's or 80's by someone studying cosmic rays that has never been reproduced, and there are some theories that tachyons are necessary to explain certain observable (or theoretically observable) conditions, which indirectly support their existence, but, AFAIK, nothing conclusive has yet been shown.

If you can find the article, please post a link.

--A Philistine

[Derek]

Ok, couple of things:

Gravity waves: physicists are spending large amounts of money on gravity infereometers to detect the presence of gravity waves. No-one has done so yet, but there is hope. Gravity wave detection is extremely difficult (if they even exist), because it is very hard to account for all disturbances possible. However, it is known that gravity, like other forces, travels at c (speed of light in a vacuum)

Tachyons: a postulated particle, never detected, whose important property is that it never goes slower than c.

FTL beams: Recently (Last summer), a group of physicists posted in Nature that they were able to fire a laser beam (laser beams are made up of photons, which are both wavelike and particlelike depending on what you are looking for) through a caesium filled chamber with a distance on the order of centimeters. The front wave of the beam contained all the information of the entire wave, and somehow caused an identical beam (although with much less amplitude) to be emitted from the far side of the chamber before the beam had fully entered the near side of the chamber. Measuring everything, these physicists were able to show the group velocity was much, much greater than c. Group veloccity is a hard thing to understand; it is very related to actual velocity, but is not the same. Take a couple of courses in Quantum Mechanics (an interesting subject in itself) and you might have a handle on group velocity. Anyways, these physicists believe that they did not violate relativity for various reasons. My best advice is to read up on this experiment yourself, for it is quite a well done experiment, and the results are still being interpreted.

The Japanese did the same thing, but with a much different wavelength of EM wave, and only exceeded c by 17% They are also not sure of what happened.

Kimball: I love it when engineers talk physics. It adds humor to my day...


Derek

[a philistine]

quote:

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Originally posted by Derek:
Ok, couple of things:

Gravity waves: physicists are spending large amounts of money on gravity infereometers to detect the presence of gravity waves. No-one has done so yet, but there is hope. Gravity wave detection is extremely difficult (if they even exist), because it is very hard to account for all disturbances possible. However, it is known that gravity, like other forces, travels at c (speed of light in a vacuum)
{snip}Derek

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Wasn't there observational (non-experimental) proof of gravity waves from rotating pulsars? I think it resulted in 1993 Physics Nobel?

--A Philistine

[Darwin]

God, I've got to fresh up on my physics. Wow, yeah when I was talking about nothing going faster then the speed of light I was leaving out theorical particals for the sake of simplicity.

Isn't there something weird about the mass of Tachyons? Like having a zero mass? Or is that Neutrinoes?

[Derek]

Negative mass.

Or imaginary mass.

It depends on how you look at the equations.

By the way, by imaginary, I mean i, as it sqaure root of negative one style imaginary.


Derek

Physics is fun!

[apache]

"Kimball: I love it when engineers talk physics. It adds humor to my day..."

Hmm, us engineers love it when scientists try to talk about theoretical impossibilities. Nothing has yet proven to be impossible. Flying? Nope, done that. Speed of sound? Nope, done that too. Flat Earth? Heh, yeah right. The moon? Yep, been there. Weightless environments near the surface of the Earth? Thats old news. Some day we will be saying the same thing about going faster than c.
Some things I would never hope for, though, are time travel (throws all conservation laws out the window, while creating fantastic paradoxes), getting 'out' of a black hole (you have a spec of dust that was your space ship, try getting that out of infinite gravitational force), and creating matter/energy (how do you create something from absolute nothing?).