Relativity 4-ever?

Abstract

This essay is about superluminal motion. It is generally believed that special relativity prohibits movements faster than the speed of light. It is explained which motion is actually forbidden by special relativity and why. Tachyons are breafly discussed and it is explained that, due to internal instability, tachyon fields cannot be used to transmit information faster than the speed of light. However, as John Stuart Bell remarked, “what is proved by the impossibility proofs is lack of imagination”. Inspired by the Frenkel–Kontorova model of crystal dislocations, we demonstrate the way to overcome the light speed barrier by introducing elvisebrions. Elvisebrions are defined as objects that can exist in the case when some hidden sectors, very weakly interacting with the visible sector, are either not Lorentz invariant, or Lorentz invariant but with different limiting velocities. In this case, elvisebrions can move in a superluminal manner without violating our existing physical models.

Untitled

“…There are hypotheses that plasma radiation can generate a particular type of non-electromagnetic field -known as a tachyon or scalar field [27,28]. This field is associated with hypothetical particles -tachyons or ignitons, which have a size comparable to neutrinos and move at speed above the speed of light.…”

A Transformation Factor for Superluminal Motion That Preserves Symmetrically the Spacetime Intervals

“…One of the major challenges associated with tachyons is their predicted imaginary rest mass [3,7], which would violate causality and lead to paradoxes. However, other theorists [1,7,10] have argued that their rest mass is a real value, for which they proposed various explanations. For instance, Caligiuri [7] has developed a novel relativistic quantum model that does not require an imaginary value for the mass, while Chodos [11] has suggested a new symmetry principle.…”

“…Ehrlich [12] believes that these superluminal particles may have been evasive because we have been looking for them "in the wrong way or in the wrong places", although we may also be searching with inadequate theoretical resources.Therefore, a modification of the search strategy may be required [10]. In our study, we delve into the very beginnings of the theory: into the derivation of the Lorentz factor mathematical expression included in our results.…”

“…In this context, authors frequently propose replacing the Lorentz factor γ with Equation (1) [3], sometimes without the imaginary unit [6,10], perhaps due to practical considerations or by reinterpreting the value of the imaginary unit [19].…”

Do moving clocks slow down?

“…Our current knowledge of the laws of nature is consistent with the notion that the physical world is organized around a commonality of causal cones, with the cones of special relativity playing a preferable role: other causal cones either coincide with the cones of special relativity, like the light cones of electromagnetism, or lie within them, like the causal cones of various condensed matter systems [28]. Although we cannot rule out the existence of hidden sectors whose causal cones lie outside the null cones of special relativity [28,29], the special role of Minkowski null cones (commonly called light cones because they coincide) for known physical systems is obvious. Therefore, it is desirable to emphasize from the very beginning this special role of light cones in the teaching of special relativity, instead of emphasizing the role of Einstein's second postulate.…”