What are tachyons?

Question

Can you tell me what they are in layman's terms (no formulae)?

No need to be condesending, Ronin.

Answer 1

Tachyons are hypothetical particles that always travel faster than light, it can never slow down to the speed of light, so in this sense they do not violate Special Relativity.
This also makes them pretty interesting as they must have an imaginary rest mass and negative energy.
They have not been detected yet, but give it some time.....

EDIT: While it is impossible to ACCELERATE anything to the speed of light and then surpassing it, it is not impossible for something to travel faster than light if it had a speed faster than light at the time it was created. There has also been one observation so far where a neutrino from a supernova beat a photon from the same supernova to the Earth, and they were both created at the same time.

Answer 2

(m)

Tachyons are a putative class of particles which able to travel faster than the speed of light. Tachyons were first proposed by physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, and named by Gerald Feinberg. The word tachyon derives from the Greek (tachus), meaning "speedy." Tachyons have the strange properties that, when they lose energy, they gain speed. Consequently, when tachyons gain energy, they slow down. The slowest speed possible for tachyons is the speed of light.

Tachyons appear to violate causality (the so-called causality problem), since they could be sent to the past under the assumption that the principle of special relativity is a true law of nature, thus generating a real unavoidable time paradox (Maiorino and Rodrigues 1999). Therefore, it seems unavoidable that if tachyons exist, the principle of special relativity must be false, and there exists a unique time order for all observers in the universe independent of their state of motion.

Tachyons can be assigned properties of normal matter such as spin, as well as an antiparticle (the antitachyon). And amazingly, modern presentations of tachyon theory actually allow tachyons to actually have real mass (Recami 1996).

It has been proposed that tachyons could be produced from high-energy particle collisions, and tachyon searches have been undertaken in cosmic rays. Cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere with high energy (some of them with speed almost 99.99% of the speed of light) making several collisions with the molecules in the atmosphere. The particles made by this collision interact with the air, creating even more particles in a phenomenon known as a cosmic ray shower. In 1973, using a large collection of particle detectors, Philip Crough and Roger Clay identified a putative superluminal particle in an air shower, although this result has never been reproduced.

Answer 3

A hypothetical particle that could fulfill the equation of relativity by using having an imaginary mass and a velocity that could be greater advantageous than the cost of sunshine. The imaginary mass is what makes it alien to our universe. It in all probability does not exist, and could desire to not exist in our universe, at any value. Its important function is for use as a plot gadget in famous person Trek ("permit's attempt a tachyon beam to deflect the gravity pulse...") and different technological know-how fiction thoughts that are much greater fiction than technological know-how.

Answer 4

Tachyons are hypothetical particles that travel faster than our concept of light. To slow a tachyon to the speed of light takes the same energy as it does to speed a particle of normal mass TO the speed of light.

Answer 5

Tachyons are theoretical particles that never travel slower than the speed of light. They come in real handy in science fiction novels, especially those dealing with time travel.

Answer 6

A hypothetical particle that can travel faster than light. (This violates the basic laws of known physics that Einstein is credited with discovering).

The term was first invented in the 1960's. It has never been confirmed to exist.

Answer 7

What Are Tachyons

Answer 8

A tachyon (from the Greek ταχύς (takhús), meaning "swift, fast") is any hypothetical particle that travels at superluminal velocity.

Answer 9

A theoretical entity that may exceed light, which Einstein says is not possible in OUR universe, but they might exist OUTSIDE our universe.

They are, essentailly, speculation or fiction.

It's a type of ray or wave or particle that might exist beyond the 4th dimension.

It might exist outside of Relatavistic space and time.

It depends on if you subscirbe to Einstein's limitations or NOT.

Answer 10

Something from Star Trek the Next Generation