Study shows what the universe would look like if you broke the speed of light Stranger: ScienceAlert

Nothing can be faster than light. It is a physics rule woven into the fabric of Einstein’s theory of special relativity. The faster something moves, the closer a landscape frozen in time comes to a standstill.

Go faster, and you’ll run into problems with inverted time, which upsets notions of causation.

But researchers from the University of Warsaw in Poland and the National University of Singapore have now pushed the boundaries of relativity to come up with a system that doesn’t contradict current physics and could pave the way for new theories.

What they find is a “special relativistic extension” that combines three dimensions of time with one dimension of space (“1 + 3 space-time”), as opposed to the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time to which we are all so accustomed.

Rather than creating major logical contradictions, this new study adds more evidence to support the idea that objects may be able to move faster than light without completely breaking the existing laws of physics.

“There is no fundamental reason why observers moving relative to the described physical systems at speeds greater than the speed of light should not be exposed to them,” says physicist Andrzej Dragandy of the University of Warsaw in Poland.

This new study builds on previous recruitment by some of the same researchers who posit that ultraluminous perspectives can help connect quantum mechanics to Einstein’s mechanics. In the same way we interpret other forces.

Particles can no longer be modeled as point objects in this framework, as they are in the normal (more temporal) three-dimensional view of the universe.

Instead, to understand what observers might see and how a superparticle might behave, we need to turn to the kinds of field theories that underlie quantum physics.

Based on this new model, the superluminous objects would look like a particle expanding like a bubble in space — much like a wave across a field. On the other hand, a high-speed object will experience several different time scales.

However, the speed of light in a vacuum will remain constant even for observers traveling faster than it, preserving one of Einstein’s cardinal principles – a principle previously only thought of in relation to observers traveling slower than the speed of light. (as we all are).

This new definition maintains Einstein’s hypothesis that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant, even for super-observers. Dragan said.

So the extended special ratio doesn’t sound like a particularly strange idea. »

However, the researchers realize that moving to the 1+3 model of space-time raises new questions, even as it answers others. They suggest that there is a need to extend the theory of special relativity to incorporate faster-than-light reference frames.

This might include 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 interact with each other).

If the physicists are correct, the particles in the universe would all have unusual properties in extended special relativity.

One of the questions raised by the research is whether or not we’ll be able to observe this prolonged behavior — but that will take a long time and a lot of scientists to answer.

“The abstract experimental discovery of a new fundamental particle is a Nobel Prize-worthy achievement that can be achieved in a large research team using the latest experimental techniques,” says physicist Krzysztof Torzynski of the University of Warsaw.

Nevertheless, we hope to apply our results to a better understanding of the spontaneous symmetry breaking phenomenon associated with the mass of the Higgs particle and other particles in the standard form, particularly in the early universe.

Research published in Classical and quantitative gravity.