# What if photons are not the fastest particles?

Einstein originally thought that special relativity was about light and how it always travelled at the same speed. Nowadays, we think that special relativity is about the idea that there is some universal speed limit on the transfer of information (and experiments tell us that photons, the quanta of light, move with the largest speed, $c$).

But what if tomorrow we happen to observe a particle $X$ that travels with a speed $v>c$? What changes would have to be made to special relativity?

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What is $c$? The speed of light in vacuum or the speed in vacuum of a massless particle? In the former case, your hypothetical discover may also indicate that photons aren't massless and your new particle could be massless, or at least lighter than the photon. That wouldn't be the first particle previously thought to be massless and then discovered to bear mass, think to neutrinos. Though, there are very low upper limits for the photon mass. –  giordano Apr 11 at 21:21
@Jim I know. I just wanted to stress that a hypothetical faster-than-light particle doesn't necessarily imply that relativity is wrong but that particle physics and electromagnetism could be wrong. –  giordano Apr 11 at 22:14
Whenever a question like this is asked, I feel compelled to ask the counter question what if tomorrow we observe a triangle with one side exceeding the sum of the lengths of the other two sides? –  Johannes Apr 12 at 0:14
@Johannes then we know we're in a closed universe –  Jim Apr 12 at 0:15
@Johannes I was being serious. That geometrical phenomenon would indicate that the universe has positive curvature; it's closed. Superluminal particles do not tell us the universe is closed since light would follow the same paths –  Jim Apr 12 at 0:24

If (and that's a big if) tomorrow we had a $70\sigma$ detection in a repeatable experiment of a particle that travelled faster than $c$, then one of several things would be true.

1) We would be forced to conclude that $c$ is not, in fact, the limiting speed of information transfer; everything based on this assumption would have to be scrapped (pretty much all of research-level physics); and we would have to start over in developing even the mathematics that allows us to start re-describing the universe.

2) We would be forced to conclude that $c$ is not the limiting speed of information transfer; we would assume that special relativity and everything based on it is the special-case effective theory of much broader physical laws and behaviours; and we would have to find a way of modifying relativity (and basically everything that relies on it) so that it can causally allow for this particle to exist and yet have everything else we see still basically operate under the idea that $c$ is the max speed.

3) We find a way to use this particle to communicate with the past and future, travel faster than light, and then we go home every night and laugh at Einstein.

4) We perform the experiment thousands of times in different laboratories, find the same result, then go back and discover that there was a fundamental flaw with the theory. Once the flaw is corrected, we see that we are not actually observing a superluminal particle.

My money is on (4) with (2) being a close second.

Note: This answer assumes that the speed $c$ referenced is the assumed maximum speed; the speed of a massless particle in a vacuum. This is why I did not include a "we determine the photon is not massless and then have to change EM" option.

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I laughed so hard at (3) :D –  user132181 Apr 11 at 17:39
every night from the beginning of the inhabitable universe, in fact. –  Trevor Alexander Apr 11 at 21:18
+1 with the note added :-). –  giordano Apr 11 at 22:44
@annav who said c is defined by information transfer? I merely meant that if a particles travelled faster than c, we could obviously use it to send information and thus c would not be the max speed of information transfer –  Jim Apr 12 at 5:21
+1 just for point 3, hope he had a good sense of humor ! –  Rijul Gupta Apr 15 at 16:42