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tachyon

Hypothetical particle with imaginary mass which is hypothesized to always travel faster-than-light

Entitytype of quantum particleQ41995

Instance of: type of quantum particle
Subclass of: hypothetical particle

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

A tachyon or tachyonic particle is a hypothetical particle that always travels faster than light. Physicists posit that faster-than-light particles cannot exist because they are inconsistent with the known laws of physics. If such particles did exist, they perhaps could be used to send signals faster than light and into the past. According to the theory of relativity, this would violate causality, leading to logical paradoxes such as the grandfather paradox. Tachyons would exhibit the unusual property of increasing in speed as their energy decreases and would require infinite energy to slow to the speed of light. No verifiable experimental evidence has been found to support the existence of such particles.

Overview

All data

36 statements · 17% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Speed: 300M m/s criterion used: greater than
Has use: superluminal communication nature of statement: hypothesis
Said to be the same as: tachyons in fiction
Manifestation of: tachyonic field nature of statement: hypothesis

On other databases

26 identifiers linking tachyon across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

17%

externally sourced

Source last edited October 1, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). tachyon (Q41995). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/tachyon-Q41995