tachyons?

[redgiantjohn]

hi everybody since getting into astronomy last year ive been reading alot of physics books like brian greene,michio kaku etc and every now and again the theoretical faster than light tachyon pops up,i find it incredibly interesting reading about theoretical particles but im having trouble finding a book dedicated to the tachyon or even theoretical particles in general be greatful if someone could point me in the right direction cheers. john

[acey]

To be honest there's not that much to say about them: it's been appreciated for a long time that you could theoretically have a particle that travels faster than light, and always stays faster than light. But they're generally considered a "bad thing" and not many physicists believe they exist.

I did a quick search for "tachyon" at Amazon and the results seem to be fringe books advocating speculative theories about faster-than-light travel, vacuum energy, etc etc. Fun if you like that sort of thing but in a completely different league fro mthe serious stuff you've been reading.