subquantum particles- faster than light?
Moderator: Alyrium Denryle
subquantum particles- faster than light?
Are there any subquantum particles that travel faster than light? I heard there are some that can escape the gravity well of a black hole. Just how hard would it be to get a ship to go not at or beyond, but near the speed of light? How much fuel would it need. So that with time dilation you could make it (perceive it) 100 light years in a few months? We'll have to leave this solar system eventually when the sun starts growing into a red giant (and what will happen to the other planets when that happens- Jupiter Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto? I heard that the sun will expand all the way to engulf even Mars)
Re: subquantum particles- faster than light?
It's easy to go faster than light. Just get yourself moving near c, then enter a region where intervening matter causes the local speed of light to be less than c. This has been done repeatedly and does work. Oh - you meant faster than light revels in a vaccum. In that case, no repeatable experiments have ever been done that produced particles traveling faster than light.Shrykull wrote:Are there any subquantum particles that travel faster than light? I heard there are some that can escape the gravity well of a black hole. Just how hard would it be to get a ship to go not at or beyond, but near the speed of light? How much fuel would it need. So that with time dilation you could make it (perceive it) 100 light years in a few months? We'll have to leave this solar system eventually when the sun starts growing into a red giant (and what will happen to the other planets when that happens- Jupiter Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto? I heard that the sun will expand all the way to engulf even Mars)
The part about particles escaping from a black hole is true - it's called hawking radiation. It works because even in a perfect vaccum, particle-antiparticle pairs still wink in and out of existence within planck time (10^-43 s). This does not violate conservation of energy because in every case, one particle has positive mass while the other has negative mass. Ordinarily, this does precisely nothing, however; when this takes place on the event horizon of a black hole (defined as the place where the gravity becomes too strong for light to escape), the negative mass particle may fall inside the event horizon ahile the particle with mass does not. In this case, an observer will notice a new particle suddenly appearing at the event horizon, where it can then escape. The negative mass particle falling inside will cause the black hole to lose an equivalent amount of mass, so conservation of energy is maintained. Through this mechanism, a black hole will slowly radiate energy. At no time do any particles travel fater than light. Note that while this mechanism is only theoretical - we have never directly observed Hawking radiation - because the second law of thermodynamics requires it to exist, it's much more credible than most unconfirmed theories in quantum mechanics.
For getting to travel fast enough so that time dialation would make you percieve a 100 ly trip as taking about 3 months, you would need to be traveling at .999996875c, which is obviously horrendously impractical for any newtonian means of propulsion.
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Dooey Jo
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A tachyon doesn't have to be a particle. Anything that travels faster than c is a tachyon.hvb wrote:Exonerate:
A tachyon is not a hypothetical particle, but a class of hypothetical particles: those that can/must travel faster then light. Just to clarify your statement.
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Actually, experiments have been done which accelerated particles to above the speed of light in a given medium (not to be confused with accelerating past c), and did produce cherenkov radiation, as predicted. As for whether something moving faster than c would emit observable radiation, I don't know.Durandal wrote:Of course not, because you can't observe something traveling faster than c, but it would emit Cerenov radiation, which we've never seen.
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Ah. I thought you were saying that we had never observed it, period.Durandal wrote:Yes, but we've never observed Chereknov radiation to occur naturally, to my knowledge.
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When they are searching for neutrinos, they're looking for cherenkov radiation, created by the neutrinos when they move through the water, and when gamma rays from space enter the atmosphere they emit cherenkov radiation.Durandal wrote:Yes, but we've never observed Chereknov radiation to occur naturally, to my knowledge.
Mai smote the demonic fires of heck...
Faker Ninjas invented ninjitsu
Of COURSE no one has ever observed Cherenkov radiation in a vaccum. That would entail a particle moving faster than c.Durandal wrote:OK, no one's ever observed it in a vacuum. Christ, happy?
data_link has resigned from the board after proving himself to be a relentless strawman-using asshole in this thread and being too much of a pussy to deal with the inevitable flames. Buh-bye.