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Physicists Find Way to Convert Light into Matter






Physics is my weak spot. Is there any practical application to this?
 
"Is there any practical application to this?" ARE YOU KIDDING???????? Alchemist have been trying to do this for melinea (sp?). They just didn't have the lasers and were too primitive to realize that they were using Lead instead of Gold.

Gold + laser + Gold + laser = Gold!!!!! Ureka!
 
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Alchemists have been trying to convert photons to electrons and positrons?
 
It's called "pair production." In the cores of the most massive stars, the only thing preventing the core from collapsing is photon radiation pressure, in this case extremely high-energy gamma rays. In some cases, the photon energy reaches levels where it becomes energetically preferable for the photons to decay into massive particles, or rather, a particle and its antiparticle. In this case, an electron and a positron.

The result is that radiation pressure decreases as gamma rays convert into particle pairs. Increasing the core temperature (due to gravitational contraction or from the star being more massive in the first place) simply results in more gamma rays being lost to pair production. Radiation pressure is therefore further decreased.

At some point, the mass of the star can be so high, and pair production so rampant, that the photon radiation flux is no longer sufficient to hold up the core. The core then collapses due to gravity, causing the star to self-destruct in a so-called "pair production" supernova. Only the most massive stars can reach this point; less massive stars may experience some pair production, but due to their lower mass the loss of radiation pressure merely results in core contraction, rather than total collapse. Apparently, if the core collapse releases more energy than the star's gravitational binding energy, the result is just a really loud bang, with no black hole or other degenerate remnant left behind.
 
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magus said:
Physics is my weak spot. Is there any practical application to this?
Click to expand...

Back in the 1960s Popular Science had an article on how to build your own laser. The laser was powerful enough to pop blue balloons and do other things. One reader wrote, "OK I built it, but other than pop blue balloons, what is it good for?"

The answer given was interesting, "We don't know yet, but we're sure that people will find practical uses for it."

Right now the idea is new and applications haven't been tried yet. Who knows maybe this will turn into the most powerful 3D printer ever to be made. Maybe materials that are rare could easily be made in the lab.


Wait and see . . .



Bob Diaz
 
It wouldn't have much use outside the laboratory unless we can find a way to efficiently harness nuclear
fusion, or else some other incredible source of energy. To create (mind you, we're not REALLY creating
anything, but just converting one thing into another) 1 gram of something, which isn't very much, requires
21.5 kilotons TNT energy equivalent. Then there is the problem of what to do with the antimatter. So 50%
of that 1 gram would be lost unless a way could be found to convert it into regular matter before it
annihilates with other matter.
 
Good old E = MC^2 (Energy = Matter times the Speed of light Squared) does say that a little bit a matter requires a LOT of energy. Assuming we can control this, it would only be good for very small things.

Who knows, it might be 100 to 500 years before this becomes practical.


Bob Diaz
 
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