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/sci/ - Science & Math

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3140365 No.3140365 [Reply] [Original]

I've recently seen someone try to argue that if you were to reach the speed of light (or beyond it), you'd gain the properties of tachyons (or turn into tachyons--one or the other), apparently because of the need to conserve mass and energy. Now, this makes absolutely no sense to me and, frankly, sounds like witchcraft. But oddly, it isn't the first time I've heard of this idea that you'd apparently turn into "energy" at the speed of light.

So my questions, basically, are where this idea coming from, and is there actually some kind of logic behind it that I'm missing?

>> No.3140369

Aliens ate donkeys in alcohol fields

>> No.3140374
File: 8 KB, 476x322, the_simpsons_homer.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3140374

>>3140369

>> No.3140376

>>3140374
Is your head lettuce? Lucy is a lion with a bird's body

>> No.3140380

>>3140365
Can you remember where you saw this so I can watch/read/listen to it? We can't ever reach the speed of light though so discussing this is discussing an impossibility, an interesting one though...

>> No.3140387

>>3140380
Eyor drank a turtle in school with three different flavours. Well ... see ... Eyor was a lode of gold but then dropped a nail on two heads and escaped with herds of seahorses.

>> No.3140390

If you could exceed C you would violate causality.

However you can't exceed C, or violate causality so that's a silly question. Also tachyons probably don't exist.

>> No.3140412

>>3140380
Sorry, I can't.

That's exactly it, though. You can't accelerate something with mass to c, so saying if you did it would become tachyons is just...ridiculous, isn't it? But it's not the first time I've heard this sort of theory, so I figured it might be based on SOMETHING.

>> No.3140424

OP, it seems either you, or your friend... most likely both. just have no idea what a tachyon is. It's a hypothetical particle that moves faster than the speed of light... that's it. They haven't been observed (it boggles my mind when people think tachyons have been documented, where do people hear stuff like that?) It's really just any particle that moves faster than light. So by that definition, yeah sure something going faster than light would gain the 'properties' of a tachyon...

As far as turning into energy at the speed of light... I don't know about that (apart from saying I've never heard of it...) but it probably stems from the fact that only energy (EM waves) can travel at that speed, and matter can be converted into energy. But that sounds more like somebody confusing the theories an making illogical leaps as far as I'm concerned.

>> No.3140425
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3140425

>>3140390

>> No.3140445
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3140445

>>3140425

>> No.3140453

>>3140424
Yes, I understand what a tachyon is and that they're only hypothetical. The fact that the guy even said tachyons is besides the point, really, since I've seen people claim you'd turn into photons as well. I'm just trying to see if there's anything--some misunderstood theory, maybe--that's causing people to come out with this stuff.

>> No.3140465

>>3140365
There's some semantics here. If you were going faster than light, you'd be a tachyon, by definition.
If you have mass, though, you can never "reach" the speed of light. Not ever, no matter how hard you tried.

>> No.3140496

>>3140465
He seemed to think your mass would become zero (although he later switched to saying it would be an imaginary mass), so it wasn't a simple case of semantics.

>> No.3140506

>>3140496
Tachyons (if they exist) exceed C, so its not surprising someone would make the logical leap that exceeding C will turn you into a tachyon.

>> No.3140516

>>3140506
I wouldn't be surprised if that's all there is to it, but I was half hoping there was something more substantial. Even if they were just misunderstanding something they heard on TV, you know?

>> No.3140532

>>3140465
Semantics are forlorn angels sent from the methane in Nutella spoons.

>> No.3140545

>>3140516

I'd say it's merely because having mass means that you cannot reach the speed of light. Since we're discussing reaching the speed of light, you must convert into something that has no mass. That's about it.

>> No.3140553

Tachyons aren't real particles. They've never been observed and as far as I know there is no way to observe them. They're just a thought experiment.

>> No.3140597
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3140597

space time is weird

>> No.3140602

>tachyons aren't real
>you can't accelerate to the speed of light if you have mass

I think everyone on this board knows this stuff, guys. The point of the thread isn't to explain why the nutjob's rantings are crazy.

>> No.3140616

Random factoid: Tachyon is derived from the Greek word 'tachus', meaning 'fast'.