Can particles smaller than photons travel faster for FTL communication?

[bozo the clown]

Is it concievable that that their could be a wave/particle smaller than a photon and traveling faster than a photon giving us FTL communication possibilities ?
If my question seems stupid please understand I am a clown !

 

[JohnDubYa]

Snot possible.

--

Everybody loves a clown, so why don't you? -- Gary Lewis and the Playboys

 

[Pyrovus]

Well, it is mathematically possible that there could exist tachyons - particles with imaginary rest mass that always travel at speeds greater than c, but none have ever been detected and few physicists take the possibility seriously.

 

[JohnDubYa]

The fact that they travel backwards in time is the real clincher.

 

[HallsofIvy]

But why the "smaller than a photon"? Are you interested in size or speed?

(Surely you don't think that speed depends on size!)

 

[bozo the clown]

well i say smaller because after all its easier to find a baseball in a pile of haystacks than a breadcrumb

 

[Bob3141592]

well i say smaller because after all its easier to find a baseball in a pile of haystacks than a breadcrumb

Not if you're a mouse.

 

[billy_boy_999]

...or a female breadcrumb...

how big is a photon anyway? does it have something to do with the Planck length?

 

[The_Thinker]

I frankly never understood the concept of light. How can it have a size and no mass?

 

[Imparcticle]

Well, it is mathematically possible that there could exist tachyons - particles with imaginary rest mass that always travel at speeds greater than c, but none have ever been detected and few physicists take the possibility seriously.

Is this mathematics in conflict with SR?

 

[HallsofIvy]

No, it is precisely because of SR that any particles that travel faster than light must have imaginary rest mass. Of course no one has ever identified such particles and it is not at all clear what "imaginary mass" would mean physically.