Neutrinos still travel faster than light

[little_monkey]

Particles, massive or massless, don't age.

A subatomic particle known as a pion has a lifespan of 000000026 seconds.

Yes, that is the time it would take for a pion to decay (btw, there's a decimal point missing), usually into a muon and a muon neutrino -- there are other modes of decay but less likely to occur. However it doesn't refer to its "age". There are no "young" pions or "old" pions. By some principles in QFT, all pions are indistinguishable, similarly for all the elementary particles of the Standard Model such as electrons, quarks, neutrino, etc...

Of course it refers to it's age. Granted it's 'age' is indeterminable, but it only exists as a pion for .000000026 seconds then it is no longer a pion.

As I said before this would violate the known principle of indistinguishability in Quantum Field Theory. All are calculations would blow up at infinity. So even if I would conceive that there are "young" particles and "old" particles, we have no way to distinguish one from the others, and must treat them as the same.

I will attempt restate the question in order to satisfy the 'semantics nazi'.

Would the lifespan/existence of a short-lived particle traveling faster than light change? As it's clock is running backwards, it would suggest so. Perhaps it becomes 'unborn'? Depending on the speed and other factors, it would be quite difficult to detect, observe and/or confirm.

We wouldn't consider that its clock is running backward but that it would have an imaginary mass. These are the so-called tachyons. They were dismissed when people first found them in Relativity. The idea was "resurrected" with String Theory. They are now considered as particles that can be exchanged between branes. Since they are off the bulk matter and travel in inter-dimensions, they can have imaginary masses ( in case, this is unclear, it means the mass is expressed as i multiplied by mass, where i is the square root of -1)

And I fail to understand the reasoning for attacking the semantics of this hypothetical thought experiment. It is not as though we are writing our Doctorate thesis at this time or even being graded.

I'm not attacking anything, just trying (poorly?) to clear up a misunderstanding.

Hope I was clearer this time.