I’m currently reading Max Tegmark’s book Our Mathematical Universe. In talking about the number of space and time dimensions we live in, he briefly mentions tachyons existing in one space dimension and three time dimensions.
I guess my questions are as follows:
What exactly are tachyons and how can they have imaginary mass?
How widely accepted are they in the science world?
What would reality with 3 time dimensions and one space dimension even be? Is it something the human mind can even imagine?
In: Physics
As others said, they are faster than light particles. The relativistic equations set a speed limit in the universe equal to the speed of light, but it turns out you can solve them at speeds greater than the speed of light. The catch is it would take infinite energy for a tachyon to slow down to the speed of light and infinite energy for a normal particle to speed up to the speed of light.
All of this means that likely it’s an error in the relativistic equations and tachyons can’t exist. The standard model has tachyon condensation which prevents them from existing.
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