Negative Mass, Tachyons, And Other Exotic Matter
COULD WE IMAGINE for a moment up being down? Or, perhaps, a universe where forward and backward were the same movement? Maybe even a parallel world in some far-off dimension where pushing on an object...actually made it push back? These may seem like nonsensical, even ridiculous ideas of some strange writer's fancy, but according to certain fields in theoretical physics these sorts of things could be happening all the time, we simply don't know about it. Not only that, but they could be the underlying key in the workings of the universe; a science that, if tamed, could provide humanity with inexaustable technological workings, including warp drives or, quite possibly, time travel -- the stuff is called "exotic matter," but I'm getting ahead of myself. Before we start falling into the actual physics of things, it should be explained what exactly exotic matter is.
Exotic matter is a hypothetical concept of particle physics. It covers any material which violates one or more classical conditions or is not made of known baryonic particles* (a baryonic particle, in its essence, is simply a class of sub-atomic particles which is made up of three quarks, two of the most famous of which would be the protons and neutrons which make up the present-day atom). Physicists usually tend to use this somewhat fictional substance to explain many of the things which baffle them, one example of which being how wormholes stay open instead of collapsing onto a singularity as do black holes. The explanation for this is something called negative mass.
Just saying it, or even thinking about it, proves rather futile; it is indeed a concept that is difficult to grasp. But the whole idea revolves around the fact that matter consisting of baryonic particles has positive mass, as in 1 kilogram, or 10, or 1000; this is a simple thing. Using Newton's equation for force, we can describe the basic proponents for how mass will react in relationship to acceleration to create positive force:
Thusly we see that positive inertial mass times acceleration equals total force. However, if in using this equation we replaced positive mass with negative mass, we would find that the force is also negative, meaning that if you kicked a chair with negative mass, it would move in the opposite direction, in essence kicking you back! Or, perhaps, imagine going shopping for groceries; as you walk into the store you notice a sign above the shopping carts in yellow and black stripes that reads, "WARNING: NEW NEGATIVE MASS CARTS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE." Of course, wondering what this all means, you grab a cart by the handle and begin to push, only to notice that you're moving in the opposite direction. Out of habit, you try to stop it by pushing harder, only to find you simply move backwards even faster. Finally, just when you're about to give up, you notice a small sign on the handle that reads, "PULL ME." With no other options at hand, you give the cart a tug and immediately stop. Curious, you tug again, and find yourself sailing off in the forward direction...towards the cereal and milk. After a few minutes, you catch the hang of it and pulling to push -- and pushing to pull -- all seems rather natural to you. But, then again, what do you hypothesize will happen when you start to put things inside the cart?
Of course, if we can live in a world with negative masses, then also other forms of matter can be imagined as well, the next of which I'll talk about now. Imaginary mass follows the same basic understandings as negative mass, in that it is simply a change made to an equation. In this case I begin with the equation for a particles total energy:
With normal, positive mass, it is obvious the way these particles act. One of the main results of positive mass is that, for E to be a real number, velocity cannot surpass the speed of light. However, if we replace mass with an imaginary number (that is, the square root of a negative) we see that, in order to retain a real number for the value of E, the value of the denominator must also be an imaginary -- for an imaginary divided by an imaginary equals a real. In order for this to happen, the following must be true: the value inside the square root must be less than zero. The only way to acheive this is to have the velocity greater than the speed of light, which goes against every theory on the propagation of the speed of light; a faster-than-light particle is said to be superluminous, and is usually referred to as a Tachyon.
Exotic matter is a hypothetical concept of particle physics. It covers any material which violates one or more classical conditions or is not made of known baryonic particles* (a baryonic particle, in its essence, is simply a class of sub-atomic particles which is made up of three quarks, two of the most famous of which would be the protons and neutrons which make up the present-day atom). Physicists usually tend to use this somewhat fictional substance to explain many of the things which baffle them, one example of which being how wormholes stay open instead of collapsing onto a singularity as do black holes. The explanation for this is something called negative mass.
Just saying it, or even thinking about it, proves rather futile; it is indeed a concept that is difficult to grasp. But the whole idea revolves around the fact that matter consisting of baryonic particles has positive mass, as in 1 kilogram, or 10, or 1000; this is a simple thing. Using Newton's equation for force, we can describe the basic proponents for how mass will react in relationship to acceleration to create positive force:
Thusly we see that positive inertial mass times acceleration equals total force. However, if in using this equation we replaced positive mass with negative mass, we would find that the force is also negative, meaning that if you kicked a chair with negative mass, it would move in the opposite direction, in essence kicking you back! Or, perhaps, imagine going shopping for groceries; as you walk into the store you notice a sign above the shopping carts in yellow and black stripes that reads, "WARNING: NEW NEGATIVE MASS CARTS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE." Of course, wondering what this all means, you grab a cart by the handle and begin to push, only to notice that you're moving in the opposite direction. Out of habit, you try to stop it by pushing harder, only to find you simply move backwards even faster. Finally, just when you're about to give up, you notice a small sign on the handle that reads, "PULL ME." With no other options at hand, you give the cart a tug and immediately stop. Curious, you tug again, and find yourself sailing off in the forward direction...towards the cereal and milk. After a few minutes, you catch the hang of it and pulling to push -- and pushing to pull -- all seems rather natural to you. But, then again, what do you hypothesize will happen when you start to put things inside the cart?
Of course, if we can live in a world with negative masses, then also other forms of matter can be imagined as well, the next of which I'll talk about now. Imaginary mass follows the same basic understandings as negative mass, in that it is simply a change made to an equation. In this case I begin with the equation for a particles total energy:
With normal, positive mass, it is obvious the way these particles act. One of the main results of positive mass is that, for E to be a real number, velocity cannot surpass the speed of light. However, if we replace mass with an imaginary number (that is, the square root of a negative) we see that, in order to retain a real number for the value of E, the value of the denominator must also be an imaginary -- for an imaginary divided by an imaginary equals a real. In order for this to happen, the following must be true: the value inside the square root must be less than zero. The only way to acheive this is to have the velocity greater than the speed of light, which goes against every theory on the propagation of the speed of light; a faster-than-light particle is said to be superluminous, and is usually referred to as a Tachyon.
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