Material Moving Faster Than Light

New research suggests that the universe is filled with particles capable of traveling faster than light, LiveScience reports — and that this scenario holds up as a potentially "viable alternative" to our current cosmological model.

The idea is a little far-fetched, sure, but it's worth hearing out. These hypothetical particles, known as tachyons, aren't likely to be real — but they're not some hokey bit of sci-fi, either. The potential for their existence is something physicists have been giving serious thought for decades, raising fundamental questions about the nature of causality.

As detailed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study, the researchers posit that tachyons are what make up dark matter, an unobservable — and despite being widely considered to exist by scientists, technically hypothetical — substance that is thought to account for around 85 percent of all matter in the universe.  READ MORE...

Tachyons Are Cosmic Engines of Time Travel

A reactor core gives off the blue glow of Cherenkov radiation — one of the few ways in which a tachyon may be detected.   Image by Argonne National Laboratory.

Interstellar travel is the greatest challenge mankind will ever face. 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. 

It becomes ever more necessary as time goes on, and ever more difficult. This is the complication we face.

Soon, even speeds approaching that of light may not be enough as our universe continues to expand at an enormous rate. 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. 

At lightspeed today travel between star systems would take years for a one-way trip. As much of a feat as luminal speeds are, they may someday prove to be insufficient themselves. But where the speed of light has presented to us an obstruction, so too is there a peculiar hope. There are, after all, two sides to every limit.

A 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.  READ MORE...