When you purchase through links on our site , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it process .
Could the world be dominated by particles that move faster thanthe speed of light source ? This model of the universe consort surprisingly well with watching , a distich of physicists has find .
In a new newspaper that has yet to be peer - reviewed , the physicists propose that our population is dominated by tachyons — a supposed kind of particle that always moves faster than calorie-free . Tachyons almost certainly do n’t survive ; live on faster than light violates everything we know about thecausal flow of timefrom retiring to time to come . But the hypothetical particles are still interesting to physicists because of the little probability that even our most closely held notions , like causality , might be wrong .
A delicate sphere of gas created by a supernova blast wave 160,000 light-years from Earth.
The researchers intimate that tachyons might be the true identity element ofdark matter , the orphic form of matter that makes up most of the mass of almost every exclusive beetleweed in the universe , preponderate normal matter 5 to 1 . Astronomers and physicists alike currently do not know what gloomy matter is made of , so they are free to ready up all way of ideas — – because , after all , sometimes a far - out idea is right , and even if it ’s wrong , it can help us on the course to a full understanding .
The researchers direct that an expanding cosmos filled with tachyons can ab initio slacken down in its expansion before reaccelerating . Our existence is presently in an accelerating phase , drive by a phenomenon know asdark energy , so this tachyon cosmological poser can potentially excuse both dark energy and dark subject at the same sentence .
have-to doe with : There may be a ' glum mirror ' universe within ours where atoms failed to form , new subject paint a picture
A Type Ia supernova seen in the galaxy M82 by the Hubble Space Telescope. These explosions allow astronomers to estimate the expansion rate of the universe.
To test this estimate , the physicists employ their framework to observations of Type Ia supernovae , a kind of stellar explosion that earmark cosmologists tobuild a kinship between distance and the expansion pace of the universe . It was through Type Ia supernova that astronomers in the late 1990s first discovered that the universe ’s expansion rate is accelerating .
The physicists found that a tachyon cosmogonical mannikin was just as good at explain the supernova information as the received cosmogonic model involving dark affair and dark energy . That itself is a surprise , apply how irregular this melodic theme is .
However , that ’s only the beginning . We now have admission to a wealth of information about the large - scale leaf universe , like the cosmic microwave background ( remainder radiation sickness released just after the Big Bang ) and the transcription of galaxies at the very with child scurf . The next step is to continue essay this idea against those additional observations .
— million of invisible ' mirror stars ' could subsist in the Milky Way , and astronomers hump how to find them
— 1st images from the Euclid ' benighted universe ' telescope are here — and they ’re jaw - dropping
— Large Hadron Collider could be generating dark topic in its subatomic particle fountain
The tachyon cosmological example is unlikely to pass those rigorous experimental mental test , given the unlikely nature of tachyons . But persist in to force in Modern , even irregular , directions is important incosmology ; we never know when we might get a breakthrough . scientist have been essay to understand dark matter for 50 years and dark energy for a quarter 100 , without any conclusive results . The solutions to these conundrums are probable to come from unexpected management .
Theteam ’s researchwas published to the preprint database arXiv in March .
