Posted on 09/13/2021 1:50:19 PM PDT by blam
In a demonstration of Einstein’s E=mc2, collisions of light yielded electrons and positrons "
Collide light with light, and poof, you get matter and antimatter. It sounds like a simple idea, but it turns out to be surprisingly hard to prove.
A team of physicists is now claiming the first direct observation of the long-sought Breit-Wheeler process, in which two particles of light, or photons, crash into one another and produce an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a positron. Like a discussion from an introductory philosophy course, the detection’s significance hinges on the definition of the word “real.” Some physicists argue the photons don’t qualify as real, raising questions about the observation’s implications.
Predicted more than 80 years ago, the Breit-Wheeler process had never been directly observed, although scientists have seen related processes, such as light scattering off of light (SN: 8/14/17). New measurements from the STAR experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider match predictions for the elusive transformation, Brookhaven physicist Daniel Brandenburg and colleagues report in the July 30 Physical Review Letters.
“The idea that you can create matter from light smashing together is an interesting concept,” says Brandenburg. It’s a striking demonstration of the physics immortalized in Einstein’s equation E=mc2, which revealed that energy and mass are two sides of the same coin.
Whether the observation truly qualifies depends on whether the photons are considered “real,” as demanded by the Breit-Wheeler process, or “virtual.” In particle physics, virtual particles are ones that appear only for brief instants and don’t carry their normal masses.
Photons from a commonplace source of light, like a lightbulb or a laser, are real, physicists agree. But the bona fides of Brandenburg and colleagues’ photons are up for debate. That’s because the light the team is colliding comes from
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
I wanna see evidence that those tiny things are actually spotted
.
...or plaid.
I don’t think it’s that outrageous. Pair-production has been a known atomic process since 1948. Pair-production is a process where a photon generates an electron and a positron near an atomic nucleus.
I never thought of it that way.
I played with humor on this thread. Will try to do less of
that on these types of threads. I know it’s somewhat
disruptive.
That's just the way my Granny always did it and all she had was a wood stove and kerosene lamps!
Photons can be converted to matter. It is called "pair production" or a "Compton pair." The total mass of the particles produced must be less than the E/c2, where E is the energy of the photon.
One of the things that is a consequence of Einstein's famous equation is that "mass-energy" is conserved; mass and energy separately are not conserved, at least under the general conditions of the universe. Under conditions of ordinary life, deviations from the "conservation of mass" and "conservation of energy" are so minute that they are not noticeable.
Most of the mass of anything is not mass due to the presence of matter, it is the mass of the energy that binds together the quarks within the protons and neutrons in every atomic nucleus of which the object is composed. That's something like 99% of the apparent mass of any object, including yourself.
Well, my quarks can just knock it off with the dang FAT!! Stupid quarks.
Transform maybe, but not make.
And Granny always knows best. Don’t argue with Granny.
Oh for crying out loud. Per the usual definition matter is something that has mass. You make an electron and positron, which have mass, out of the collision of two photons which have no mass. So you created matter.
“Energy cannot be created or destroyed;
it can only be changed from one form to another.”
(Albert Einstein).
“Einstein’s equation E=mc2 . . .”
The Origin of the Equation E = mc2
By Harry Hamlin Ricker
John Chappell Natural Philosophy Society
May 23, 2015
Because the issue of the source of this equation keeps coming up, here is a quick discussion of the origin of the famous formula, incorrectly attributed to Einstein. Thanks to Robert Sungenis for providing this.
Contrary to popular opinion, E = mc2 did not originate with Einstein. As van der Kamp reveals:
https://www.naturalphilosophy.org/site/harryricker/2015/05/23/the-origin-of-the-equation-e-mc2/
Photons or waves? Waves of what? I thought light, radio waves, gamma rays and x rays were the same phenomenon?
Terms need to be defined before proceeding.
Dark energy gets at a different problem raised by our observations of the universe. On the cosmic scale, there seems to be extra energy that is counteracting gravity, with the universe expanding more and faster than we can otherwise explain.
There are many new theories that try to explain gravity but none have gained general acceptance. Newton's characterization of gravity as a force of unexplained origin remains the practical benchmark. Thus we can explain fairly well how gravity works but not how and why it exists. Crucially, we cannot yet mesh gravity and relativity with quantum mechanics.
As for the existence of the universe itself, a new trend is trying to develop a theory that mathematically explains consciousness and unifies it with matter. Some physicists are embracing the point that quantum mechanics is so intertwined with consciousness that, in terms of philosophy, modern physics regards matter as pan-psychic.
Remarkably, Edgar Allen Poe wrote and published an essay that projected as much and that the universe began in a single moment of creation, with consciousness existing before matter. Poe's writing helped inspire the physicists who first developed the big bang theory.
With dramatic popular accounts discarded, physicists see the big bang as not so much a massive explosion but as more like a balloon rapidly expanding into utter nothingness. And if Judaism and Christianity are correct, all matter arose from the consciousness of a Creator. Nowadays physicists seem less and less inclined to insist otherwise.
How clever🙂
Great news! The first step to a Star Trek replicator!
“...it is the mass of the energy that binds together the quarks within the protons and neutrons in every atomic nucleus of which the object is composed.”
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Just curious (because I’m a total layman when it comes to science)....but it’s the quarks proper that interact with the Higgs Field, right? Doesn’t that “give” the particle its Mass? How do the bonds between quarks/particles have any impact? I’ve tried to watch videos explaining it, but they get pretty darn confusing.
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