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From: gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Re: Question on FTL and quantum mechanics
Message-ID: <6389@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 6-Dec-84 04:37:01 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.6389
Posted: Thu Dec  6 04:37:01 1984
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> > You ought to read up on tachyons which are particles moving faster
> > than light.  They can't slow down in the same way that we can't speed
> > up to c.  There is no known evidence of tachyons.
> 
> Tachyons are dead.  Some respected physicist published a paper on them
> once.  There were many replies, to the effect of, "you made a mistake in
> your physics."  The guy then said, "oops", and that was the end of it.
> 
> The some non-physicists discovered the original article and published much
> literature about it.
> 
> Sorry that I don't remember any of the names involved.

Aarghh!  "Tachyons" were first taken seriously in modern times around 1970
when Gerald Weinberg brought them to the attention of the physics
community.  Almost every standard argument I hear for them is a repeat
of what he originally said.

As soon as one takes tachyons seriously, he has to deal with the purely
imaginary quantities that turn up as the value of various physical
quantities (proper time, perhaps mass, and so forth).  The conventional
way to do this is by one of a number of "reinterpretation" principles.

In 1970 I studied this concept and wrote a paper on it for my honors
research class.  I tried once to get the paper published but the referees
appeared not to understand it; since they were dependent on continued
interest on tachyons for their research funding and my paper demolished
the concept, I do not wonder that they refused to hear what I was saying.

Basically, what I discovered was that when one carefully analyzes the
physical meaning of faster-than-light motion, it turns out to be just
another (rather peculiar) way of describing precisely the same phenomenon
as slower-than-light motion.  I have twice posted the demonstration of
this to this newsgroup, so I will spare everyone and not do so now.

As far as I know, the physics community at large still believes in the
possibility of tachyons as something special, although they have never
been able to detect them (e.g. by Cerenkov radiation).