Could a tachyon drive space ship go backwards in time?

Tachyons aren't known for certain to exist. They're one of those beautiful dreams where although the math doesn't forbid them, they would be incredibly hard to pin down. IF they exist, then they are FTL particles only. The theory of relativity doesn't actually forbid FTL travel; it only forbids particles from crossing the light barrier. Of course, for us STL beings, that is pretty much a roadblock to traveling faster than light. Even if tachyons exist, how do we, as STL beings, interact with FTL particles? I think it quite unlikely that they could ever be used as a means of backwards time travel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon

Still, we have all of the future laid out before us, so who knows what advancements and discoveries will be made in the centuries to come (assuming we're still around).

I agree. You could negate time in transit. Meaning that you probably "save" a lot of time when in travel...

But if you're talking about going BACK in time... That would depend entirely on whether or not time exists as linear or as a loop...

Using a tachyon drive space ship would definitely CUT time... But even accelerated particles that have slowed down do not send themselves back in time...

If it did, by now, wouldn't you think that history would have been altered by stray tachyon particles and beams from the future?

Or maybe history has already been altered, as time goes by, our perception of reality might be altered on a daily basis as well...

Could a tachyon drive space ship go backwards in time?

I don't think so...

The tachyons themselves would travel backward in time by virtue of their imaginary energy. However, conservation of energy (which we are now assuming is a complex number) prevents the conversion imaginary energy into real energy, so the ship would not acquire kinetic energy (it wouldn't move). Tachyons could only be used to propel a ship made of tachyons. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

There is no evidence that tachyons even exist, but even if they did no they would not confer any special property on normal matter. They would not make things move back in time, not make FTL travel possible and may not even interact with normal matter.

Neither tachyons nor time exists.

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well of course it can