Matter from Light?

gftChris

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_16-5-2014-15-32-44

Less political, more scientific for those interested. Some guys at my alma mater have apparently come up with an experiment to collide two photons and produce an electron and a positron.

So where did matter come from? Light, clearly.

DieHardBrownsFan

Genesis 1:3

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

Westside Steve

@gftchris said:

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_16-5-2014-15-32-44

Less political, more scientific for those interested. Some guys at my alma mater have apparently come up with an experiment to collide two photons and produce an electron and a positron.

So where did matter come from? Light, clearly.

So now matter can be created and destroyed?

WSS

gftChris

Not sure about destroyed. This is a theoretical experiment dreamt up in 1934 - we've only just figured out how we can conduct the experiment, and are attempting to prove it.

Osiris

Yet another Star Trek technology coming to fruition.

Browns149

According to Bon Scott, Tschaikovsky said "let there be light" and there was light

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/acdc/letthereberock.html

MLD Woody

That's pretty awesome. I'll have to try to read up on it later.

VaporTrail

@westside-steve said:

So now matter can be created and destroyed?

WSS

No.

There's an equation that some guy you may have heard of derived in the 1900's which supports this.

Westside Steve

Conservation of mass or energy or something I'm not sure about. ....

(IOW no fucking clue. .)

WSS

gftChris

@westside-steve said:

Conservation of mass or energy or something I'm not sure about. ....

(IOW no fucking clue. . )

WSS

Presumably the light energy would be transformed to heat energy, making these particles extremely hot. We've known for a while from the double slit experiment (I think?) that light can behave like a particle as well as a wave, in the same way that matter can, so light becoming matter I guess makes some sort of sense? Either way, cool stuff, it could go some way to answering the 'where did matter come from?' questions relating to the big bang once and for all, without saying "this is our best guess currently"

calfoxwc

To shed a little light on the subject,

"what does it matter now?"

gftChris

@calfoxwc said:

To shed a little light on the subject,

"what does it matter now?"

85./10

Not bad, but if you'd just gone with something like:

"Hopefully it'll shed a little light on the matter"

You would have got a 10/10.

gftChris

More science being awesome:

http://www.iflscience.com/technology/solar-roads-could-power-entire-country

A small US-based company called Solar Roadways are developing a solar road surface that, if installed nationwide, has the potential to produce more renewable energy than the entire country uses.
Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/technology/solar-roads-could-power-entire-country#gbupyrQSOb1zE3HK.99

VaporTrail

@westside-steve said:

Conservation of mass or energy or something I'm not sure about. ....

(IOW no fucking clue. . )

WSS

Oh you know it, you just don't know that you know it.

Westside Steve

haha well Einstein is always the Jeopardy go to guy like Babe Ruth the baseball category...

WSS

VaporTrail

So the equation that governs this is

E=mc²

E = energy

m = mass

c = speed of light

It basically means that mass is energy.

We can actually do the opposite of this right now via positron electron annihilation.

gftChris

True, but going from A -> B doesn't imply we can go from B -> A. See, bread -> toast.

Westside Steve

Beauty is truth, truth beauty.

That is all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know.

WSS

MLD Woody

Those solar roadways are awesome. Too bad it would take forever for something like this to get implemented through pur govt. Traditional energy lobbies won't have it and Congress will follow the money.

gftChris

This is pretty cool