Ah, yes, I see how you got a minimum there - multiplying the classical
parabola by the relativistic mass got you a minimum somewhere beyond the
singularity. I can imagine how some poor soul digging down the wrong tunnel
could get itself stuck there :-)

Luckily E is just mc^2 and tachyons can accelerate and lose energy for
as long as they like. By the way, you might not have to tunnel to get to
the other side - why not create particles that go faster than light the
same way you create the ones that go exactly at c?

Yair.

On Tue, May 23, 2006 at 01:44:24AM +1200, Russell McMahon wrote:
> > It's funny for me to make my debut on this list so far off topic, 
> > but
> > since it's been more than a year since I last blinked my LED and I 
> > kept
> > lurking here mainly for the OT discussions, perhaps it's actually
> > appropriate, especially as my current occupation is studying
> > particle physics.
> 
> I feel relieved (and amazed) that I seem to have got so relatively 
> little wrong :-) . (Not little, just relatively little. Or was that 
> realtivitly little).
> 
> >> It is easy to plot classical energy of a particle (or starship or 
> >> ...)
> 
> > What formula do you use for this plot? I don't think any I know has
> > these minima (or else I haven't bothered to trace their behaviour 
> > after
> > v=c... :-)).
> 
> 
> It's not meant to be useful or even meaningful :-)
> But, it's fun.
> Energy from classical velocity and mass.
> Mass from rest mass and velocity using special theory.
> Plot energy against velocity.
> Voila!.
> 
> Takes almost no time to do - try it, you'll like it.
> You'll also probably explain why it's meaningless in any useful frame 
> of reference ;-) -but that would ruin a good story.
> 
> 
> 
>         Russell McMahon
> 
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