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
The word tachyon just refers to any theoretical particle that travels faster than light. In the same way that any particle with mass can only ever travel below the speed of light, a tachyon would only ever be able to travel *faster* than light.
Tachyons, as far as we know, do not exist, nor are they theorized to exist. Certain mathematical models don’t rule them out, but there are other reasons that we generally believe tachyons are impossible, and it’s generally accepted that tachyons do not and cannot exist, and they’re really just a mathematical quirk.
As for what a universe with 3 dimensions of time and one dimension of space would be like, no we can’t possibly imagine or speculate what that universe might be like or even if it would be stable enough to exist.
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