Chapter 10: Mysterinos

Aside from the title being a made up word, Hammond makes some interesting points in his final chapter. This entire chapter entails all the ‘particles’ that were or are thought to exist based on theories. However, Hammond discounts many of them and explains why they can’t or most likely don’t exist. He begins by introducing a type of particle called tachyons. These particles are simply anything that can travel at astronomical speeds. There are many skeptics for these types of particles because we can’t see them and it is believed that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Hammond continues by defining them as more of a ‘mathematical curiosity’ as oppose to an actual physics related particle. Next Hammond defines negative mass. To put it simply, it’s just the negative value of a mass. Following his example, its best represented in the equation F=ma where force and acceleration have directions and mass is scalar. If this were a normal case where the mass is positive, if you push on a ball with a northerly force, it will go north. If it were to hit a wall the wall would exert a southerly force and it would bounce back going south. If we take this same situation and apply a negative mass, the ball would hit the wall but the negative value of the mass causes it not to bounce back in a southerly direction, but continue toward the wall. This results in an increasing acceleration at the wall as the wall continues to push back until eventually the ball goes thorough the wall. This is a very neat thought because if you apply the logic and the process of aligning the arrows as we set up in our diagrams, this is what would happen. It is a simple yet intriguing thought. These were the two main ideas within the chapter that captivated me the most and the fact that it was dealing with equations that I’ve used and understand makes it that much more interesting because I can correctly interpret what Hammond was describing. This was an ideal chapter to conclude the book with as it answered, or at least attempted to answer some of the unknowns that Hammond left the reader through out the course of the book.