Nothing can go faster than light. It's a rule of
physics woven into the very fabric of Einstein's special theory of relativity.
The faster something goes, the closer it gets to its perspective of time
freezing to a standstill.
o faster still, and you run into issues of time
reversing, messing with notions of causality.
But researchers from the University of Warsaw in
Poland and the National University of Singapore have now pushed the limits of
relativity to come up with a system that doesn't run afoul of existing physics,
and might even point the way to new theories.
What they've come up with is an "extension of
special relativity" that combines three time dimensions with a single
space dimension ("1+3 space-time"), as opposed to the three spatial
dimensions and one time dimension that we're all used to.
Rather than creating any major logical
inconsistencies, this new study adds more evidence to back up the idea that
objects might well be able to go faster than light without completely breaking
our current laws of physics.
"There is no fundamental reason why observers
moving in relation to the described physical systems with speeds greater than
the speed of light should not be subject to it," says physicist Andrzej
Dragan, from the University of Warsaw in Poland.
This new study builds on previous work by some of
the same researchers which posits that superluminal perspectives could help tie
together quantum mechanics with Einstein's special theory of relativity – two
branches of physics that currently can't be reconciled into a single
overarching theory that describes gravity in the same way we explain other
forces.
Particles can no longer be modelled as point-like
objects under this framework, as we might in the more mundane 3D (plus time)
perspective of the Universe.
Instead, to make sense of what observers might see
and how a superluminal particle might behave, we'd need to turn to the kinds of
field theories that underpin quantum physics.
Based on this new model, superluminal objects would
look like a particle expanding like a bubble through space – not unlike a wave
through a field. The high-speed object, on the other hand, would 'experience'
several different timelines.
Even so, the speed of light in a vacuum would remain
constant even for those observers going faster than it, which preserves one of
Einstein's fundamental principles – a principle that has previously only been
thought about in relation to observers going slower than the speed of light
(like all of us).
"This new definition preserves Einstein's postulate
of constancy of the speed of light in vacuum even for superluminal
observers," says Dragan.
"Therefore, our extended special relativity
does not seem like a particularly extravagant idea."
However, the researchers acknowledge that switching
to a 1+3 space-time model does raise some new questions, even while it answers
others. They suggest that extending the theory of special relativity to
incorporate faster-than-light frames of reference is needed.
That may well involve borrowing from quantum field
theory: a combination of concepts from special relativity, quantum mechanics,
and classical field theory (which aims to predict how physical fields are going
to interact with each other).
If the physicists are right, the particles of the
Universe would all have extraordinary properties in extended special
relativity.
One of the questions raised by the research is
whether or not we would ever be able to observe this extended behavior – but
answering that is going to require a lot more time and a lot more scientists.
"The mere experimental discovery of a new
fundamental particle is a feat worthy of the Nobel Prize and feasible in a
large research team using the latest experimental techniques," says
physicist Krzysztof Turzyński, from the University of Warsaw.
"However, we hope to apply our results to a
better understanding of the phenomenon of spontaneous symmetry breaking
associated with the mass of the Higgs particle and other particles in the
Standard Model, especially in the early Universe."
Reference: Classical and Quantum Gravity.
0 Comments