I'm not convinced aliens visited or sent probes to Earth, but I accept the high likelihood of extraterrestrial life. 'Oumuamua and Loeb's arguments are strong, definitely more than many "exotic rock formation illuminated from just the right angle with two dozen parameters frozen at pre-set values" explanations I've seen in some papers. When you reach that point, the alien probe hypothesis deserves to be considered on equal grounds. It really doesn't. You can get spinless localizable tahyons from assuming the existence of particles whose relativistic mass doesn't depend on relative velocity. Magical? Hardly. There's no reason, be it physical or purely mathematical, why it's prohibited. Hell, even for something as simple as rest mass = dynamic mass, you get all the special relativity working as intended and it's a valid solution to the Klein-Gordon equation. it's called Cox-Hill tachyon formulation if memory serves. This doesn't even get into the general relativity with all its gravitational weirdness. Just kinda spitballing physics here, though. Last time I did well while pissed-out drunk, but we can try it your way and stay sober.the pure magical thinking and incomprehensible leaps of faith it takes to believe in faster-than-light travel.
(1) damn that was an awesome thread get in here am_Unition (2) Humor an old man - last I heard, tachyons were on about the same theoretical footing as phlogiston and even if they were verifiable, the zeroth law of thermo prevented us from ever observing or interacting with them. Has the consensus view moved on that one?
Regarding detection, I'll need to do some further reading, but I think it's entirely dependent on the formulation. In principle, they should be able to interact gravitationally like anything else with mass and energy. Then again, I could probably design you an interaction scheme by the afternoon, and some poor experimentalist would need fifty years to test it. Regarding consensus, as kind of an outsider to the field myself, I'd say it's getting to the level of "it can't hurt to fund a theorist or two working on it" when it comes to recognition. And, really, the off-chance of tachyons yielding reward IMO trumps 98% of string theory research, and we keep funding that 11-dimensional monstrosity.(2) Humor an old man - last I heard, tachyons were on about the same theoretical footing as phlogiston and even if they were verifiable, the zeroth law of thermo prevented us from ever observing or interacting with them. Has the consensus view moved on that one?
Okay, let's back up. The conception of "tachyon" I learned (from the number two guy at LIGO no less) was that c, nature's speed limit, meant getting past the speed of light consumed all the energy in the universe thus you ain't gonna do it. However, since E=mc^2 can be solved hyperbolically as well as parabolically, relativity doesn't rule out particles that are just as bound to move faster than the speed of light, never to slow to it. However, you have to turn mass into an imaginary number and things null out real good when you try to cross the asymptote. I'm definitely the straight guy who delivers "but professor" exposition in these stage plays, though.Regarding detection, I'll need to do some further reading, but I think it's entirely dependent on the formulation.
All of that is true, yes. I'm sorry I don't have an off-hand response, but I'm trying to use Einstein-Maxwell equation to check if we could see something propagating <c in the gravitational curvature from, say, the point of tachyon creation. Unfortunately, with less-than-stellar intuition on my part.
So, the good thing is that I'm non-trivially wrong. Essentially, I wanted to see what would happen with the spacetime curvature around tachyon-containing bubble of elecromagnetic field. My messup is very mathy, but traces to a discontinuity at the spacetime point at which tachyon originates. Oh well. My bad, learned something, it was fun. I still think there's a lot of potential here, though.
Thank Christ Gohmert (R-TX) is there to out-science scientists. I never thought of finding over 71 brazillion gillapetbytes of fuel for the 359 googellian Watt-erages of energy to boost Earth to a 1.01 AU semi-major axis! Seriously, the Trump energy budget of a nuke vs. a hurricane was wayyyyy less of a discrepancy than Gohmert's (lack of) understanding here. It's sad that lawyers constitute such a huge percentage of Congress. Maybe scientists should start flexin'.
Wow, I didn't get kb's comment until reading this. It's certainly something to make up plans like that. He's like an exquisitely dim-witted Bond villain. You, and many many others, were saying that since that March for Science. There's too much inertia, not unlike with the Moon.It's sad that lawyers constitute such a huge percentage of Congress. Maybe scientists should start flexin'.
My wife showed me a thread in one of the Facebook groups she subscribes to as a naturopathic physician. There were maybe 50 people worrying over the fact that keys stick to them now. There were only a couple people going "did you ever try sticking your keys to your body... before you were vaccinated?" There were zero people going "have you checked to see if your keys are, in fact, magnetic? With like... a magnet?" One of the two political parties of the most powerful nation on earth has evolved to embrace the following platform: - knowledge is suspect - science is false - infectious vulnerability is virtue - social protections are evil And granted, once you've started down that road it's really hard to turn off of it. But it's also really hard to recruit new members to your cause.
Is he that stupid or do you think he was trolling? One could read the subtext to be, "Climate change is a fantasy so here's a fantasy solution." I am probably giving him too much credit, but I just can't believe that he's ever asked a question whose premise stipulates that climate change is even a thing.
Oh no... Gohmert is dumb as shit. Here's an article from FIVE YEARS AGO showing just some of the batshit crazy things he has said. Here's another - entirely different - list from 2013. This is when he said that Texas native caribou would go on dates next to the oil pipeline for the warmth... The worst part? He knows he's the dumbest man in Congress.
Particle physicist friend had this one taped to his office door: A tachyon walks into a bar (tachyons move backwards in time)The bartender says "We don't serve tachyons here"