Can anti-matter travel faster than light speed?

[NoahIsTheRealDeal]

if no matter can go faster than light can anti matter only reason why i made this account really wanna know guess ill find out tommorow gots tah sleep

 

[Mordred]

No both matter and antimatter is limitted to the speed limit. Which is also the limit of all information exchange.

 

The only difference between the two is charge. They are opposite. Other than that what applies to matter also applies to antimatter.

[beecee]

No both matter and antimatter is limitted to the speed limit. Which is also the limit of all information exchange.

 

The only difference between the two is charge. They are opposite. Other than that what applies to matter also applies to antimatter.

Bingo! I would hazard a guess though, that if we, and the normal stuff around us, were made of anti matter, we would be calling that anti matter, matter, and matter, anti matter....if you know what I mean.

[hypervalent_iodine]

!

Moderator Note

I changed the thread title to better reflect the OP.

[Daecon]

There's a hypothtical particle called a tachyon that, if it was real, would move at faster-than-light speeds. While tachyons are popular in science fiction involving time-travel stories, there's nothing to suggest that tachyons are actually real things that exist.

[Sensei]

I will add to this, antimatter is nothing special in the Universe.

It's created every day by the Sun during fusion.

It's created during decay of unstable isotopes (beta decay plus/minus, double beta decay plus/minus, double beta decay plus neutrinoless).

 

Annihilation of matter-antimatter on the Sun is responsible for approximately 7.64% of the all energy produced at the current stage of star evolution.

 

If you're interested more, I presented fusion reactions in this thread

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/85656-solar-fusion-neutrinos-and-age-of-solar-system/

 

[beecee]

There's a hypothtical particle called a tachyon that, if it was real, would move at faster-than-light speeds. While tachyons are popular in science fiction involving time-travel stories, there's nothing to suggest that tachyons are actually real things that exist.

And hypothetically of course, [and from memory] these hypothetical particles are already created at FTL speeds, and if they gain energy they slow down, and if they lose energy, they speed up.

Nice to see you still around Daecon! I also gave the other place a miss.

[Janus]

And hypothetically of course, [and from memory] these hypothetical particles are already created at FTL speeds, and if they gain energy they slow down, and if they lose energy, they speed up.

Which leads to an conundrum if they are a charge particle. If you subtract energy, they speed up, but the acceleration of a charged particle produces EMR, the emission of which subtracts energy from the tachyon, which causes it to accelerate, leading to more EMR emission, subtracting more energy...

[beecee]

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/Tachyon.html

[MigL]

IIRC, tachyons arise because in SR, when v>c, the root is imaginary; the mass must, then, also be imaginary, because energy needs to be real.

 

Yet your link states that recent treatments use a real mass.

I find it hard to reconcile the two.

Guess I'll need to do some reading

[beecee]

IIRC, tachyons arise because in SR, when v>c, the root is imaginary; the mass must, then, also be imaginary, because energy needs to be real.

 

Yet your link states that recent treatments use a real mass.

I find it hard to reconcile the two.

Guess I'll need to do some reading

From memory I was once informed that the hypothetical Tachyon, would be created travelling FTL so it need not accelerate to it. Does that solve the conundrum?

Edited July 6, 2017 by beecee

[Mordred]

From memory I was once informed that the hypothetical Tachyon, would be created travelling FTL so it need not accelerate to it. Does that solve the conundrum?

Nope if the tachyon accelerates it loses energy.

here is an arxiv review paper.

 

https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.5428&ved=0ahUKEwiJhJ2EzPXUAhUGzmMKHQsjCWEQFggfMAE&usg=AFQjCNHn7OzLqE8FrqaNS_efpGBABs1hWg

 

The rest mass treatment itself differs. The paper covers the differences.

Edited July 6, 2017 by Mordred

[beecee]

I also found this......

 

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/tachyons.html

 

An interesting extract follows.......

 

"You can now deduce many interesting properties of tachyons. For example, they accelerate (p goes up) if they lose energy (E goes down). Furthermore, a zero-energy tachyon is "transcendent", or moves infinitely fast. This has profound consequences. For example, let's say that there were electrically charged tachyons. Since they would move faster than the speed of light in the vacuum, they should produce Cherenkov radiation. This would lower their energy, causing them to accelerate more! In other words, charged tachyons would probably lead to a runaway reaction releasing an arbitrarily large amount of energy. This suggests that coming up with a sensible theory of anything except free (noninteracting) tachyons is likely to be difficult. Heuristically, the problem is that we can get spontaneous creation of tachyon-antitachyon pairs, then do a runaway reaction, making the vacuum unstable. To treat this precisely requires quantum field theory, which gets complicated. It is not easy to summarize results here. However, one reasonably modern reference is Tachyons, Monopoles, and Related Topics, E. Recami, ed. (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1978)."

[Mordred]

yeah What Migl is referring to is the relation

 

[latex] m_o=im_*[/latex]

 

The proper mass is the imaginary mass of some positive value as long as v>c the imaginary mass is treated as real.

 

edit a related note GR is valid for superluminal if all observers are also superluminal. This is because in both cases mass becomes infinite when v=c.

Edited July 6, 2017 by Mordred

[Daecon]

Would it be possible to have a "zero energy" tachyon? Surely by virtue of existence it has at least some energy, shouldn't it?

 

Could this energy be in discrete quanta so there's a definite limit to both the highest and lowest value of the energy variable?

 

 

[MigL]

That's correct Mordred.

 

In the equation E=gamma[mc^2] where gamma is the Lorentz factor, when v>c, the Lorentz factor is the root of a negative number.

For the energy to be a real, positive value, then, m has to also be imaginary.

 

Alternatively, if m is real and positive, then the energy has to be imaginary.

[Mordred]

Would it be possible to have a "zero energy" tachyon? Surely by virtue of existence it has at least some energy, shouldn't it?Could this energy be in discrete quanta so there's a definite limit to both the highest and lowest value of the energy variable?

Yes under QM the units would be discrete. However no upper limit results from that. All particles must have some energy. You cannot have a field excitation without causing a potential anisotropy with the field.

 

This difference in potentials provide the ability to perform work. (energy).

 

Planck temperature would theoretically be the maximal prior to singularity.

That's correct Mordred.

 

In the equation E=gamma[mc^2] where gamma is the Lorentz factor, when v>c, the Lorentz factor is the root of a negative number.

For the energy to be a real, positive value, then, m has to also be imaginary.

 

Alternatively, if m is real and positive, then the energy has to be imaginary.

Consequence being your symmetry relations are preserved under the changes in sign you mentioned.

 

for others benefict , as I know you already know this. Though come to think of it. I wonder if that would imply the So(1.3) Lorentz group is a double cover?

 

Gonna have to think about that one.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Mordred

[Sensei]

Equation

[math]E=\gamma m c^2[/math]

Is not the only one energy equation.

 

There is also

[math]E=h f[/math]

 

Prior annihilation we have f.e.

[math]E=2 \gamma m_e c^2[/math]

after annihilation we have

[math]E=2 h f_c[/math]

 

[math]2 \gamma m_e c^2 = 2 h f_c[/math]

(If gamma was >1, f_c must be appropriately higher)

 

If both sides of equation will be divided by Planck constant (normalization of h=1) we will get:

[math]\frac{2 \gamma m_e c^2}{6.62607004e-34} = 2 f_c[/math]

 

Can you have imaginary frequency.. ?

 

[math]f=\frac{1}{t}[/math]

 

Can you have imaginary time/period.. ?

Edited July 7, 2017 by Sensei

[koti]

IIRC neutrinos travel faster than light in water while still travelling at c because light interacts with water and neutrinos don't.