More about tachyons

DEC 01, 1969

Not so fast! say critics of the May article in which Bilaniuk and Sudarshan offered the arguments for faster-than-light particles. Their letters raise questions about causality and interactions. The original authors contribute a reply.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3035294

Olexa-Myron Bilaniuk

Stephen L. Brown

Bryce DeWitt

William A. Newcomb

Mendel Sachs

E. C. George Sudarshan

Shoichi Yoshikawa

“Anything that is not forbidden is compulsory,” says Murray Gell-Mann’s half-facetious totalitarian principle. What then about faster-than-light particles called “tachyons”? In their May article Olexa-Myron Bilaniuk and E. C. George Sudarshan argued that valid solutions of Albert Einstein’s relativity equations describe such particles. Thus if Einstein’s equations are accurate descriptions of the physical universe and if solutions not forbidden are compulsory, tachyons must exist.

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References

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More about the Authors

Olexa-Myron Bilaniuk. Swarthmore College.

Stephen L. Brown. Stanford Research Institute.

Bryce DeWitt. University of North Carolina.

William A. Newcomb. Livermore Laboratory.

Mendel Sachs. State University of New York, Buffalo.

E. C. George Sudarshan. University of Texas, Austin.

Shoichi Yoshikawa. Princeton University.