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Cosmic Speedsters Could Form Stars, If Covered

Hypothetical faster-than-light particles might build stable stellar cores.

Scientists have found that self-gravitating bodies made of theoretical "tachyons" (hypothetical particles that always travel faster than light) can exist, but only with a normal matter shell.

Research Questions

The research team wanted to know:

  • If a stable star-like object could form from tachyons.
  • The size and mass of such an object.
  • How a tachyon core's properties would link to the larger star.

To find answers, researchers crunched numbers using the Oppenheimer-Volkoff equation, a tool calculating how dense objects like stars hold together. They ran simulations, changing the density at the star's center and the mass of the tachyons. The model considered a tachyon core surrounded by a "non-tachyon envelope" (a layer of regular matter).

Key Findings

The study revealed a pure tachyon star would have finite mass but stretch out forever. However, a stable setup can exist if a tachyon core is wrapped in a normal matter envelope.

  • The mass and radius of this tachyon core grew with central density. They hit peak values before slowly shrinking.
  • The maximum mass for this tachyon core is about half of our Sun’s mass, scaled by the tachyon's own mass compared to a proton's.
  • The maximum radius is about 4 kilometers, similarly scaled.

"The most important property of tachyonic self-gravitating body is that it can exist being embedded in some non-tachyonic medium (whose parameters do not influence the mass and radius of the tachyon core) and that its maximum mass and radius are estimated according to formula (60)," explained the study's authors. This finding means that the normal matter shell doesn't affect the core's size or mass.

The study admits a pure tachyon star wouldn't be stable because it violates basic physics rules at low densities. The type of outer shell changes the total star's mass and size. Future work could explore how these "tachyon cores" might fit into theories about the universe's biggest structures.

So, while we've yet to find a tachyon, the universe might be hiding stars with hearts that race faster than light itself.

Reference:

Ernst Trojan. "Tachyon stars." arXiv preprint arXiv:1110.2523 (2011).