Mathematicians Extend Einstein's Special Relativity Beyond Speed of Light

Hugh Pickens writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that despite an apparent prohibition on faster-than-light travel by Einstein's theory of special relativity, applied mathematician James Hill and his colleague Barry Cox say the theory actually lends itself easily to a description of velocities that exceed the speed of light. 'The actual business of going through the speed of light is not defined,' says Hill whose research has been published in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society A. 'The theory we've come up with is simply for velocities greater than the speed of light.' In effect, the singularity at the speed of light divides the universe into two: a world where everything moves slower than the speed of light, and a world where everything moves faster. The laws of physics in these two realms could turn out to be quite different. In some ways, the hidden world beyond the speed of light looks to be a strange one. Hill and Cox's equations suggest, for example, that as a spaceship traveling at super-light speeds accelerated faster and faster, it would lose more and more mass, until at infinite velocity, its mass became zero. 'We are mathematicians, not physicists, so we've approached this problem from a theoretical mathematical perspective,' says Dr Cox. 'Should it, however, be proven that motion faster than light is possible, then that would be game changing. Our paper doesn't try and explain how this could be achieved, just how equations of motion might operate in such regimes.'"

Comments

Did you take any science courses at all?

[EvolutionInAction]

What. The. Hell. This is not profound. This is trivial.
Anybody that took any science classes knows that the equations work fine as long as v != c. Just like I can get negative frequencies out of a fourier transform. The math works, but that doesn't mean I have actual, physical negative frequencies.

Re:Did you take any science courses at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you use a fourier transform to put a signal into frequency domain you end up with positive/negative components. If you then bandshift, the negative component becomes positive and will actually exist when broadcast. But only the positive part is actually a physical thing. It's... weird.

This is one interpretation, and taught by some professors who think students can handle weirdness better than complex arithmetic, but it's much more elegant to deal in complex signals, where the negative- and positive-frequency elements are conjugates and sum to exactly the real signal.

Once you understand this, Fourier transforms will stop being magic crap and start making sense.

Re:imaginary mass

[cb123]

If you just read the abstract to TFA you can see that the claim here is less novelty than the press release makes it sound like (the press overplays things - SHOCKER! ;-). They are really only presenting an alternate derivation without using mass of long-known results related to tachyonic physics and virtual particles and so forth.

Now, I am personally a bit dubious this is the first time the alternate derivation has been done, but I havne't read their particular approach. One would hope any reviewers assigned to the paper would have done reasonable due diligence/homework about the particulars (though sometimes that hope is in vain).

Re:Tachyons

[buswolley]

How do journal fees support my research? While there is some cost to publishing, most of the labor is unpaid for by the publisher (reviewers and researchers). It would be better to publish online without a for profit company, and make it open access. Mild submission fees could be used to cover operating costs related to hosting.

Re:The challenge of getting past c

[Artifakt]

Special Relativity was immediately testable. In fact, one of the tests for its predictions turns out to be the Michelson–Morley experiment, which was first performed in 1887 before Special Relativity was even a gleam in Einstein's eye. The M-M experiment was refined repeatedly during the period that Special Relativity was first discussed (1905-06) to focus on testing one of SR's basic predictions, so a test of at least one of special relativity's predictions existed by publication date.

          General relativity was immediately testable by measuring the Perhelion precession of Mercury. It was also possible to test it by observing solar bending of starlight any time there was a total solar eclipse. Yeah, you couldn't do that on the day of first publication because there wasn't a solar eclipse that day, but the researchers knew there would be total solar eclipses in the future and could set up to test the theory as soon as one happened. But, suppose they had had to wait until the next eclipse after that, or something? Do you really want to advance the claim that a theory isn't scientifically testable if a human event such as a war keeps the observers from getting to the location where it could be tested? Or if cloudy weather blocked observing? That nearly happened.

        Normally, the rule that it isn't science if it doesn't make testable predictions doesn't mean that something becomes unscientific if there are budget cuts or other such events that aren't themselves part of the scientific method.