That is one of the challenges in detecting them. Once they do reach the speed of light, the tachyons disappear. That is, when tachyons lose energy they travel even faster and when they gain energy they slow down with the slowest possible speed being that of light. At zero energy, a tachyon travels infinitely fast. They are an exotic kind of matter that slows down - not speeds up - when energy and momentum are added to it. But consider another class of particles, tachyons, which are always traveling faster than the speed of light. If energy and momentum are added to these particles then they speed up. They can approach the speed of light but never reach or surpass it (neutrinos, for example, come very close). The first, bradyons, are the everyday particles with which we’re familiar and which make up ordinary matter: protons, electrons, neutrons. Imagine that there are two kinds of particles in this universe. The Cherenkov radiation is represented by the white line in the middle. In fact, we’d see two images of it with each image going in opposite directions of one another. This visualization shows how a tachyon would look as it came nearby. There are, after all, two sides to every limit.Ī comment Einstein makes in his 1905 paper reads, “…velocities greater than that of light have no possibility of existence.” But modern science and mathematics have found clever ways around this, loopholes which permit superluminal speeds without contradicting the theory of relativity. But where the speed of light has presented to us an obstruction, so too is there a peculiar hope. As much of a feat as luminal speeds are, they may someday prove to be insufficient themselves. At lightspeed today travel between star systems would take years for a one-way trip. The light of our closest star systems and galaxies will struggle to make their way to us, their existence visible only in our books and our computer programs which will have to remind us that the surrounding sky didn’t always look so empty. Soon, even speeds approaching that of light may not be enough as our universe continues to expand at an enormous rate. It becomes ever more necessary as time goes on, and ever more difficult. Not only because it’s so grandiose and marked by impressive shimmering spacecraft - tall and boundless, scaled by materials born of human ingenuity - but because it’s a necessary step in exploration and understanding of the cosmos. Interstellar travel is the greatest challenge mankind will ever face. A reactor core gives off the blue glow of Cherenkov radiation - one of the few ways in which a tachyon may be detected.
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