Tachyon refraction

[Mad For Science]

This is pure conjecture but I was thinking about it and wanted to ask people who know more about tachyons than I do:

In a vacuum:

Particles with mass can only travel with v < c
Mass-less particles can only travel with v = c
Tachyons can only travel with v > c

If you refract light by passing it through a medium with a refractive index > 1 it slows down. I have heard of experiments where light is slowed to virtually a complete stand still, so my question is this:

What would happen if you can slow a tachyon down to the speed of light? Would it give up its energy and instantaneously create mass-less particles? Or does that violate the laws of physics? If it did could you use that result to detect tachyons?

[imatfaal]

Tachyons are purely hypothetical.

 

I am not sure that this question can be answered outside of the Speculations Forum - but we can leave it here for the moment as long as no personal hypotheses are promoted

[Mad For Science]

Tachyons are purely hypothetical.

 

I am not sure that this question can be answered outside of the Speculations Forum - but we can leave it here for the moment as long as no personal hypotheses are promoted

Can you move it there? I don't have enough information to consider it a hypothesis.

[fiveworlds]

Can you move it there? I don't have enough information to consider it a hypothesis.

 

 

Of course you don't as imatfaal already said tachyons are purely hypothetical particles based on our assumptions from a well established model that could easily have been wrong from nothing more than us not knowing any better at the time. Regardless of that you have the problem that most reasonable people don't have access to the level of technology required to prove that such things exist or won't care so you are going to have a tough time explaining such an hypothesis to people in a way that makes sense to them. Similarly you have made a conjecture

 

 

In a vacuum:

 

Particles with mass can only travel with v < c

Mass-less particles can only travel with v = c

Tachyons can only travel with v > c

 

 

now this is perfectly ok according to current theories but could easily be proven wrong if say we found out that light itself has small mass from having a semi-particulate nature. There is no evidence to prove that light doesn't have a mass and the deflection of light around high gravity objects seem to suggest it may. This deflection is know as a Gravitational lens (Einstein Ring) and is often seen when studying space

Edited February 14, 2015 by fiveworlds

[ajb]

What would happen if you can slow a tachyon down to the speed of light? Would it give up its energy and instantaneously create mass-less particles? Or does that violate the laws of physics? If it did could you use that result to detect tachyons?

 

For example, you have Cherenkov radiation for electrically charged tachyons when they pass through a dielectric medium. They lose energy, but being tachyons they gain velocity. You also get the same effect gravitationally. So, you would need to add energy rather than take it away to slow a tachyon down, but you cannot slow a tachyon down to the speed of light.

 

All that said, we know that tachyons are unstable quantum mechanically and will quickly decay into a system of regular particles.

[Mad For Science]

For example, you have Cherenkov radiation for electrically charged tachyons when they pass through a dielectric medium. They lose energy, but being tachyons they gain velocity. You also get the same effect gravitationally. So, you would need to add energy rather than take it away to slow a tachyon down, but you cannot slow a tachyon down to the speed of light.

 

All that said, we know that tachyons are unstable quantum mechanically and will quickly decay into a system of regular particles.

I wonder what would happen if tachyons interacted with a black hole.

[ajb]

I wonder what would happen if tachyons interacted with a black hole.

You mean could they escape the event horizon?

 

You would have to consider space-like geodesics and see if they do not necessarily end up at the singularity. For normal particles the geodesics inside the horizon always hit the singularity in finite time. I am not sure exactly what happens to the space-like geodesics, but this I am sure is well-know. Try google!