The universe looks very different when it moves faster than the speed of light

The superluminal world would have to be characterized by three temporal dimensions and one spatial dimension and would have to be described in the familiar language of field theory. (CREDIT: inspiration – pixabay)

How would observers moving faster than the speed of light in a vacuum see our world? Such a picture would be clearly different from what we face every day. We should expect to see not only phenomena occurring spontaneously, without a deterministic cause, but also particles traveling simultaneously along many paths, say theorists from the universities of Warsaw and Oxford.

Also, the very concept of time would be completely transformed – the superluminal world would have to be characterized by three time dimensions and one spatial dimension and would have to be described in the familiar language of field theory. It turns out that the presence of such superluminal observers does not lead to anything logically contradictory, moreover, it is quite possible that superluminal objects do exist.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Albert Einstein completely changed our perception of time and space. Three-dimensional space acquired a fourth dimension – time, and the concepts of time and space, still separate, began to be interpreted as a single whole.

– In the special theory of relativity, formulated in 1905 by Albert Einstein, time and space differ only in sign in some equations, – explains prof. Andrzej Dragan, a physicist from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw and the Center for Quantum Technology at the National University of Singapore.

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Einstein based his special theory of relativity on two assumptions – Galileo’s principle of relativity and the constancy of the speed of light. According to Andrzej Dragan, the first principle is decisive, which assumes that the same laws of physics apply in every inertial frame and that all inertial observers are equal.

– As a rule, this principle applies to observers who move relative to each other at a speed less than the speed of light (c). However, there is no fundamental reason why observers moving with respect to the described physical systems at speeds greater than the speed of light should not obey it, Dragan argues.

What happens if we assume – theoretically at least – that the world can be observed from superluminal frames of reference? There is a chance that this will allow the basic principles of quantum mechanics to be incorporated into special relativity.

Graphic abstraction of space-time. (Credit: Pixabay/CC0, public domain)

This revolutionary hypothesis of prof. Andrzej Dragan and prof. Arthur Eckert of the University of Oxford presented for the first time in an article “The Quantum Principle of Relativity” published two years ago in the New Journal of Physics. There they considered a simplified case of both families of observers in a spacetime consisting of two dimensions: one spatial and one temporal.

In their latest publication, Relativity of Superluminal Observers in 1 + 3 Spacetime, a group of 5 physicists goes one step further by presenting conclusions about a complete four-dimensional spacetime. The authors proceed from the concept of space-time corresponding to our physical reality: with three spatial dimensions and one time dimension.

However, from the point of view of a superluminal observer, only one dimension of this world retains its spatial character, the one along which particles can move. “The other three dimensions are the dimensions of time,” explains prof. Andrew Dragan. – From the point of view of such an observer, the particle “ages” independently at each of the three times. But from our point of view – illuminated bread eaters – it looks like a simultaneous movement in all directions of space, that is, the propagation of a quantum mechanical spherical wave associated with a particle, – comments prof. Krzysztof Turzynski, co-author of the article.

This, as Prof. Andrzej Dragan, in accordance with the Huygens principle formulated back in the 18th century, according to which each point reached by a wave becomes the source of a new spherical wave. Originally, this principle only applied to the light wave, but quantum mechanics has extended it to all other forms of matter.

As the authors of the publication argue, the inclusion of superluminal observers in the description requires the creation of a new definition of velocity and kinematics. – This new definition preserves Einstein’s postulate about the constancy of the speed of light in a vacuum, even for superluminal observers, – the authors of the article prove. “So our extended special relativity doesn’t seem like a particularly extravagant idea,” Dragan adds.

How does the description of the world into which we introduce FTL observers change? After taking into account superluminal solutions, the world becomes non-deterministic, particles – and not one at a time – begin to move along many trajectories at once, in accordance with the quantum principle of superposition.

“For a superluminal observer, the classical Newtonian point particle ceases to make sense, and the field becomes the only quantity that can be used to describe the physical world,” notes Andrzej Dragan. “Until recently, it was believed that the postulates underlying quantum theory are fundamental and cannot be derived from something more fundamental. In this work, we have shown that the justification of quantum theory using the extended theory of relativity can be naturally generalized to the space-time 1 + 3, and such an extension leads to the conclusions postulated by quantum field theory,” write the authors of the publication.

Thus, all particles seem to be extraordinarily quantum! are properties in the extended special theory of relativity. Does it work the other way around? Can we detect particles common to superluminal observers, i.e. particles moving relative to us at superluminal speeds? “It’s not that easy,” says Prof. Krzysztof Turzynski.

“Simply discovering a new fundamental particle experimentally is a feat worthy of a Nobel Prize and can be accomplished by a large research team using the latest experimental methods. 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. Andrzej Dragan adds that the key component of any spontaneous symmetry breaking mechanism is the tachyon field. It appears that superluminal phenomena may play a key role in the Higgs mechanism.

Faculty of Physics, Warsaw University. Physics and astronomy at the University of Warsaw appeared in 1816 as part of the then Faculty of Philosophy. In 1825 the Astronomical Observatory was founded. Currently, the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw consists of the following institutes: Experimental Physics, Theoretical Physics, Geophysics, the Department of Mathematical Methods in Physics and the Astronomical Observatory.

Research covers almost all areas of modern physics on a scale from quantum to cosmological. The scientific and pedagogical staff of the faculty has more than 200 academic teachers, 81 of which are professors. The Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw has about 1,000 students and over 170 doctoral students.

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Note: materials provided above by Warsaw University. Content can be edited for style and length.

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