A simple demonstration of how controlled creation and absorption of tachyons violates causality
1977; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 18; Issue: 16 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1007/bf02785067
ISSN1827-613X
Autores Tópico(s)Experimental and Theoretical Physics Studies
ResumoTachyons are the hypothetical particles which travel faster than light, and only faster than light. When an excited atom returns to the ground state, a photon is spontaneously created, going at the speed of light. There is no meaningful question as to how it got to tha t speed. Similarly, an excited atom might emit a tachyon, spontaneously, at the same time. I t would travel at a speed greater than light and carry away energy and m o n ~ t u m . Photons are their own antiparticle. If we picture an electron in space and time (1) and mathematically bend its path backward in time, then we reinterpret the physical result associated with this diagram. We say that an electron and positron (antielectron) were created at an earlier event. The forward time moving antielectron appears on the diagram as the (~ original ~> electron moving backward in time. This (( reinterpretation ~> principle can be applied to tachyons as well. A tachyon which looks to be moving backward in time should physically correspond to an antitaehyon moving the other direction through space as time increases (in the psychological sense) for human observers. Some researchers, particularly RECAMI and MIGNANI have claimed that this reinterpretation eliminates all paradoxes except possibly where macroscopic phenomena are involved. We shall develop a simple macroscopic experiment to show that atoms must be able to ( at the left end and a target flower at the right end. A short lever sticks out of the side of the (~laser ~>. If we trip the lever, the tachyon laser emits a very sharp, intense burst of tachyons for which we measure a speed of, let us say, 2c. These taehyons hit the flower 4 minutes later and blast it into hundreds of pieces. The flower absorbs all the tachyons in the pulse as it explodes, so the tachyons disappear, (just as absorbed light disappears). We recheck the experiment repeatedly. The delay between the trigger trip and the iiring of the laser is, let us say, 10 =9 seconds, reproducibly. Now we tow the sled far out into space to the right and accelerate it up to an incomingspeedof V x ~ ~c, relative to our frame, then turn off its rocket engines. The <~ charged ~) tachyon laser and flower are traveling along attached to it. No tachyons
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