Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Causality and Space-like Signals

Abstract

ALTHOUGH we pointed out1 in 1962 that space-like particles (signals) travelling “backward in time” carry negative energy—or must be reinterpreted—recent textbooks on the special theory of relativity (for example, refs. 2–7) still purport to show that causality arguments forbid the existence of faster-than-light particles. One book which is at least partially correct on this score is Ya. P. Terletskii's Paradoxes in the Theory of Relativity8, but even this ignores the possibility of reinterpretation.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Bilaniuk, O. M. P., Deshpande, V. K., and Sudarshan, E. C. G., Amer. J. Phys., 30, 718 (1962).

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  2. Bohm, David, Special Theory of Relativity, chap. 28, 155 (W. A. Benjamin, Inc., New York, 1965).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Taylor, E. F., and Wheeler, J. A., Spacetime Physics, 40 (W. H. Freeman and Co., San Francisco, 1966).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Kacser, C., Introduction to Special Theory of Relativity, 77 (Prentice Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1967).

    Google Scholar 

  5. French, A. P., Special Relativity, 117 (W. W. Norton and Co., New York, 1968).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Resnick, R., Introduction to Special Relativity, 106, 196 (John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, 1968).

    Google Scholar 

  7. Schwartz, H. M., Introduction to Special Relativity, 59 (McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1968).

    Google Scholar 

  8. Terletskii, Ya. P., Paradoxy Teorii Otnositelnosti (Nauka Press, Moscow, 1966) (in Russian). English translation, Paradoxes in the Theory of Relativity (Plenum Press, New York, 1968).

    Google Scholar 

  9. Feinberg, G., Phys. Rev., 159, 1089 (1967).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Tolman, R. C., The Theory of Relativity of Motion, 54 (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1917).

    Google Scholar 

  11. Arons, M. E., and Sudarshan, E. C. G., Phys. Rev., 173, 1622 (1968).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  12. Dhar, J., and Sudarshan, E. C. G., Phys. Rev., 174, 1808 (1968).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  13. Stückelberg, E. C. G., Helv. Phys. Acta, 14, 588 (1941); 15, 23 (1942). Feynman, R. P., Phys. Rev., 74, 939 (1948); 76, 749 (1949).

    Google Scholar 

  14. Hurst, C. A., Math. Rev., 26, 667 (1963).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

BILANIUK, OM., SUDARSHAN, E. Causality and Space-like Signals. Nature 223, 386–387 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1038/223386b0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/223386b0

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing