Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/tachyon

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[edit] Seeing a Tachyon

Explanation

The observer is at the point where the black lines converge. The big translucent ball is an object moving faster than the speed of light. As the object approaches, it's outrunning its own light and it's invisible. After it passes, the light from where it was is just reaching you so it appears to be moving away from you. But light is still leaving the object where it actually is so it looks like the object is in 2 places at once, and in both places moving away from you at superluminal speed. And from the side that the object is actually going, the back of the object appears to flatten out. The fascinating thing about this phenomenon is that an observer at any point along the tachyon's path observes the same complex, bubbly transformation even though the object is spherical the whole time.

Reason

Not the best image quality and it's pretty darn big (over a megabyte) but I thought the concept was very cool :)

Articles this image appears in

Tachyon

Creator

User:TxAlien

• Support as nominator froth^t 06:16, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
• Support either Caption would do well to explain the colors - which I assume show red/blue shifting of each image. btw- welcome back froth. Debivort 06:38, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
• Comment: Er, excuse me, but please explain the supposedly impossible "The big translucent ball is an object moving faster than the speed of light" - what has happened to the physics I once learned? --Janke | Talk 07:15, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
  • It's OK Janke - if you check the article, tachyons are hypothetical particles that travel faster than the speed of light. As normal particles we know of have an upper speed limit of c, tachyons would have a lower speed limit at c, i.e., they can never travel slower than the speed of light. Let me emphasise again that they are hypothetical. --jjron 09:17, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
    • That's what I thought - thus, the image is also hypothetical. I'll abstain from voting for that reason... I kinda like real pictures more! ;-) --Janke | Talk 13:52, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
      • The image is still encyclopedic. Even if it turns out that tachyons are an incorrect model and do not exist, this image still illustrates the theoretic model of tachyons and thus is still very encyclopedic, even if it is hypothetical. Wuzzeb 19:50, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
  • It's not really hypothetical anyway since particles are regularly observed travelling faster than the local speed of light, in earth's atmosphere for instance or in the water tanks that are used to detect neutrinos, such as the SNO experiment. The lines at 45 degrees in this animation indicate the path of the very-real Cerenkov radiation. Spebudmak 20:49, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
• Support either. Reading the caption and looking at the animation, I was able to get a good picture of what tachyons might look like! Good job :) Wuzzeb 19:50, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose Comment: I think this would be easier to follow if the "object" moved towards the observer from father back, and for a longer amount of time. Since that's when the animation starts, it would be easier to follow the animation if I had a longer time to figure out when it starts. Enuja 22:05, 10 August 2007 (UTC) As my question was never addressed, and I think that it would be fairly easy to come up with a much better version with all of the comments on this page, I change my lack of vote into an oppose. Enuja 00:33, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
• Support all but third, prefer top: Though I agree with Enuja. Ideally, we could let the tachyon come on from off panel right, then wait until the bubbles had left the image to send it on again. Adam Cuerden ^talk 07:32, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is a fascinating animation. Kudos to the creator. However, a featured picture is something that will illuminate (pun intended, but without humour) the visitor to Wikipedia in a glance. Tachyons are first of all, as has been noted, merely hypothetical particles. Secondly, this animation is one possible way in which an observer would see tachyons, under commonly-held perceptions of tachyon behaviour. But they are theoretical, and no one really knows. All of this and more is critical to understanding what one is looking at, and the visitor viewing the Featured Picture will likely know none of it. Without a deeper understanding, this beautiful animation is only slightly more useful than a work of psychedelic art. Unschool 15:37, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
• Support Great simple illustration of a concept that would be quite difficult to visualize from a verbal description. Unschool, I'd agree with your objection if this were a picture of a unicorn or if tachyons only appeared in science fiction, but to me the subject seems encyclopedic. Whether or not there may be different ways to depict a tachyon, I reckon this is illuminating. No caption given above but the one in the article is good.~ Veledan • | T | 22:54, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, of course, the subject is encyclopedic; I didn't mean to imply otherwise. (For that matter, so too are unicorns, aren't they?) Anyway, my opposition is not vehement, the imagery is fascinating, thus meeting criterion for inclusion. I just would prefer the animation not be displayed outside of the context of the article. Slightly curmudgeonly, :-) Unschool 01:51, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

A good point, and one that stopped me clarifying my support for a few days. I trust that whoever writes the POTD caption (if this becomes one) will make it clear this is theoretical! ~ Veledan • T 20:52, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

• Support alternative - For its enc value. Alvesgaspar 20:09, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
• Question So this is just an effect due to retarded arrival times of photons? There is no Lorentz Contraction going on here? Note that any object that is moving close to the speed of light will have its length changed as measured in the reference frame of a stationary observer, according to Einstein's Special Relativity. Spebudmak 20:31, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose All are too small in my opinion even for an animation and are appearing very scrathy. The animation is not appearing smooth on my PC, perhaps that is just me though. WikipedianProlific^(Talk) 11:24, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Are we agreed we can exclude the third one, for its lack of information about the tachyon's "real" movement? That'll leave us with just a choice of backgrounds. Adam Cuerden ^talk 03:44, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, that's why this nom is down here. MER-C 05:38, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

• Hmmm all but one supporter seems to be prepared to support either and 1 each show a preference for a light or dark background. I'm pretty indifferent too, but I'll plump for the black background if it'll help get this nom closed. This hasn't been clarified after a few days on ice, but it's clear that both versions have consensus to promote... I think that under these circs the closer should feel authorised to make the casting vote and go ahead! Just my 2c. ~ Veledan • T 20:52, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

• Opppose The combination of article text and image need to be more symbiotic. This image is so confusing that it takes a full page-long caption to explain it, cluttering the article and making it less readable. There simply must be a better way to illustrate this point, even if it is to break the illustration up into several images, each of which are attached to their own paragraphs. As a stand-alone image, without the context of the article, it's just not useful (though certainly impressive). -Harmil 03:39, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

No consensus MER-C 11:02, 28 August 2007 (UTC)