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sanman
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"Boiling the Vacuum"
I came across this article describing the most intense laser pulse ever made:
http://www.physorg.com/news122298608.html
In a paragraph near the end, they mention this:
How exactly does "boiling the vacuum" work? If we take light as a wave passing through a medium of barely-lived virtual particle-antiparticle pairs, are we saying that sufficiently extreme oscillation amplitudes could result in some pairs being imparted enough energy to escape mutual anihilation?
If so, then could experiments be conducted to test for a "foam" medium that lacks a reference frame? (I've always sort of visualized a "quantum foam" as something like the "snow" on your television screen, whereby all the blinking points of light are so dynamic and briefly-lived that they can't give you a reference frame or sense of movement as you pan your eyes across the snowy/fizzy screen.)
I'm assuming that only extrema conditions can allow us to detect the "foam". Some researchers have sought to look a very distant, massive stars, thinking that their high energy passing across an extremely large distance would reveal the structure of space. But could this extremely intense laser reduce the need for a distance factor, and allow us to see the structure of space just from the extreme intensity of the laser itself?
I came across this article describing the most intense laser pulse ever made:
http://www.physorg.com/news122298608.html
In a paragraph near the end, they mention this:
In addition to medical uses, intense laser beams like these could help researchers explore new frontiers in science. At even more extreme intensities, laser beams could potentially "boil the vacuum," which scientists theorize would generate matter by merely focusing light into empty space. Some scientists also see applications in inertial confinement fusion research, coaxing low-mass atoms to join together into heavier ones and release energy in the process.
How exactly does "boiling the vacuum" work? If we take light as a wave passing through a medium of barely-lived virtual particle-antiparticle pairs, are we saying that sufficiently extreme oscillation amplitudes could result in some pairs being imparted enough energy to escape mutual anihilation?
If so, then could experiments be conducted to test for a "foam" medium that lacks a reference frame? (I've always sort of visualized a "quantum foam" as something like the "snow" on your television screen, whereby all the blinking points of light are so dynamic and briefly-lived that they can't give you a reference frame or sense of movement as you pan your eyes across the snowy/fizzy screen.)
I'm assuming that only extrema conditions can allow us to detect the "foam". Some researchers have sought to look a very distant, massive stars, thinking that their high energy passing across an extremely large distance would reveal the structure of space. But could this extremely intense laser reduce the need for a distance factor, and allow us to see the structure of space just from the extreme intensity of the laser itself?
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