Is it possible to convert light into matter?

[Dual Op Amp]

Is there any theories on taking light, and changing it to matter? Imagine a machine that could do that. Imagine instantly having a house built in front of you, in a matter of milliseconds, it's got to be the ultimate invention.

 

[mathman]

The lightest ordinary particle is the electron, which has a rest mass of .511 Mev. To create an electron (actually an electron-positron) requires a photon of energy greater ythan double (i.e. 1.022 Mev). Photons of this energy are gamma rays. Light photons are far too weak to turn into matter.

 

[LURCH]

If we look at the tremendous amounts of energy that are released by an atomic explosion, and the tiny amount of mass that was converted to energy to create that explosion, we can assume that the amount of energy required to make a house would be very difficult to produce.

 

[Gonzolo]

Even if sufficient energy could be assembled to make a reasonable quantity of matter, using these particles to make atoms, molecules, and anything recognizable as a solid is far from being feasable.

 

[ElectroPhysics]

Is there any theories on taking light, and changing it to matter? Imagine a machine that could do that. ... it's got to be the ultimate invention.

Nice idea... Goodluck...

 

[Mwyn]

what atoms are like?

could some one tell me if atoms are actual peices of matter or not. I mean,if they are matter then that would mean that atoms would be made out of even smaller atoms and there would be an endless chain of atoms beinging made out of atoms even though that is not possible because I read some ones theorie saying that atoms can "blink themselves into and out of existence" and all infinite amount of atoms can't possibly disappear and reappear just like that. If they are not made from smaller atoms then what are they? they couldn't be matter because they are not made out of atoms.
It's all very confussing cn some one please answer?

 

[Olias]

Is there any theories on taking light, and changing it to matter? Imagine a machine that could do that. Imagine instantly having a house built in front of you, in a matter of milliseconds, it's got to be the ultimate invention.

The "information Paradox' which is currently being debated, deals with your question in a different format, for instance back in april Orion1 asked a simple question:https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=20803

if you folow the thread through to its conclusion you will see that he/she makes a real-time resolution to the Hawking Radiation Paradox. It seems inconceivable that no-one else seen the significance of his Equations, but the following months produced a frantic amount of scientific activity revolving around this 'information paradox', culminating in Hawking appearence in Eire giving his (Hawkings) solution to the said problem.

It does prompt one to ask who is who on these forums, and what are their motovations for certain types of Questions?

 

[Nenad]

If we look at the tremendous amounts of energy that are released by an atomic explosion, and the tiny amount of mass that was converted to energy to create that explosion, we can assume that the amount of energy required to make a house would be very difficult to produce.

In an atomic bomb, no mass is destroyed. It is the nuclear force that causes the explosion to be so violent. When a slow moving neutron is aimed at a uranium atom, the atom braks in half,emiiting 3 neutrons in the process and a chain reaction begins. The reson for the violence and unstibility is because the uranium aton has a lot of protons in the nucleus, and they ate all positively charged. What keeps them togeter is the nuclear force, and this force is overcome with that single neutron.

In a fusion reaction, like on the sun, the reaction mechanism is:
$$4p^+ -----> He + 2e^+ + 2V_e$$

$$V_e = electron\ neutrino$$

 

[Mwyn]

atoms

I wonder, If an atom can pop itself out of exsistence then how can it pop itself into exsistance?

 

[pmb_phy]

The lightest ordinary particle is the electron, which has a rest mass of .511 Mev.

Note: That is the rest energy. The rest mass is 0.511 MeV/c².

If we look at the tremendous amounts of energy that are released by an atomic explosion, and the tiny amount of mass that was converted to energy ...

The conversion of mass-energy is not a change in mass but a change in the form the mass takes. E.g. from rest mass and kinetic energy to electromagnetic energy etc.

In an atomic bomb, no mass is destroyed.

Yep. Mass is conserved in such a case. Bravo. Most people miss this point.

Pete

 

[LURCH]

In an atomic bomb, no mass is destroyed.

Of course not, it is converted to energy (from matter). The original post was about reversing the process, converting energy back into matter. My point is that the amount of energy produced in an A-bomb ( like the Heroshima Bomb) is the result of the conversion of the original material form matter to energy of equall mass. The amount of that mass that is actually converted to energy is vary small. In the "Little Boy" device, I think they used about one pound of U-235. About 1.5% of that actually split, and that 1.5% lost a tiny fraction of its mass (which was converted to energy of equall mass). The energy of that blast is the amount of energy one would need to trap and convert into matter in order to produce a grain of U-235 with a mass equal to the amount of mass lost by the reaction.

That energy would not need to be converted to U-235, of course; it could be made into whatever matter we desired, but the amount of energy (14.5 Kilotons) would produce only a tiny speck of whatever matter we produce.

 

[Mk]

That energy would not need to be converted to U-235, of course; it could be made into whatever matter we desired, but the amount of energy (14.5 Kilotons) would produce only a tiny speck of whatever matter we produce.

If there was like... an anti-entropy machine, natural or man-made (though man came from nature...). You light a match, and blow it out. Its pretty hard to put all the smoke back in, un-burn the match, put back all the particles that were blown out... yeah.

 

[alpha_wolf]

If this is to be anywhere near practical, we would likely first need to tap into the ZPE, or some other (yet undiscovered) high density energy source, which does not rely on matter to energy conversion. Then we'll need to learn to extract that energy quickly and efficiently, such that we could produce large (read huge) energy quantities within reasonable time. We would also need to learn to build system which could handle such energy fluxes. After that, we'll need to find a way to use that energy to efficiently produce any atom we need. Chances are that by the time we learn to do all that, nanotechnology will be quite well established, so it could take over at that stage to arange the produced atoms as desired.

All of this involves at least some new physics (except nanotechnology, for which the physics exists today), and most of it invloves a lot of new physics. We may learn those things eventually, but probably not any time soon.

We may partially ponder the atom production stage today, but (I think) only to a limited degree.

If there was like... an anti-entropy machine, natural or man-made (though man came from nature...). You light a match, and blow it out. Its pretty hard to put all the smoke back in, un-burn the match, put back all the particles that were blown out... yeah.

That is not necessary, unless you want to convert matter to energy and then back to matter, and get all your original matter back the way it was. If you allow for some mass to be lost, you can do this without any "anti-entropy" machine. But that would be rather pointless. Converting ZPE or a similar type of energy into matter (i.e. skipping the matter to energy stage) would be far more usefull. And you will in fact get plenty of by-products, but there's not much we can do about that.

 

[Nenad]

what mass is destroyed in an atomic bomb? I think you guyes have to read about the mechanism of the bomb itself befoure saying something like this. I told you above, the atomic bomb gets its energy from splitting bonds, not from destroying mass. And remember, an atomin bomb is very different than a hydrogen bomb.

 

[LURCH]

what mass is destroyed in an atomic bomb?

None. As has been stated, Mass is not destroyed, it is converted to energy. The product of the reaction has slightly less mass than the material that reacted. That "missing" mass is the energy of the explosion. The mass of the energy released is equal to the mass that was lost from the reaction material. It is true that this mass is taken from binding energy, but the fact remains that the atoms that are produced in an atomic reaction have less mass than the atoms that went into that reaction.

If you think that mass is not converted to energy in an atomic bomb, then your view of the mechanism of the bomb is, at the very least, at varience with mainstream science.

 

[selfAdjoint]

A large part of the mass of an atom is in the binding energy of the pion reactions that hold it together, just as most of the mass of the protons and neutrons is in the binding energy of the gluons that hold them together. This is measured as mass, i.e. resistance to acceleration. It also gravitates when a sufficient number of atoms are present.

 

[chroot]

we would likely first need to tap into the ZPE

Please refrain from posting unsupported or non-mainstream theories to the general physics forums.

- Warren

 

[chroot]

what mass is destroyed in an atomic bomb? I think you guyes have to read about the mechanism of the bomb itself befoure saying something like this. I told you above, the atomic bomb gets its energy from splitting bonds, not from destroying mass. And remember, an atomin bomb is very different than a hydrogen bomb.

The energy stored in bonds contributes to the mass of the bound object. In other words, two oxygen atoms have slightly more mass when separated than when bound together, for example.

For chemical bonds, the mass changes are quite small and are negligible. For nuclear reactions (both fission and fusion), the mass changes are substantial. Total mass-energy is conserved, but mass by itself is not.

- Warren

 

[alpha_wolf]

we would likely first need to tap into the ZPE

Please refrain from posting unsupported or non-mainstream theories to the general physics forums.

- Warren

I was unaware that ZPE is not mainstream physics... If the problem is in the suggestion of tapping into it in the future, would you approve if the words "if possible" were added (they were implied)?

EDIT: The reason I ask is that I don't quite understand where your objection comes from. I suspect it comes from you missunderstanding my claims in that post. I would like to clarify, but unforetunately I cannot do so until you clarify your objection.

 

[Nenad]

so a bond or an intermolecular interaction has mass. Doesn't that mean that something like gravity has mass?

 

[alpha_wolf]

so a bond or an intermolecular interaction has mass. Doesn't that mean that something like gravity has mass?

This is just an educated guess, but I think that for an object where gravity plays a significant role in holding its parts together, the answer would be "yes". More precicely, the gravitational binding energy would contribute to the rest mass of the object - if you split it into several parts, you should find that the sum of their rest masses is slightly less than the rest mass of the object. Again, this is just an educated guess.

 

[Mk]

I was unaware that ZPE is not mainstream physics... If the problem is in the suggestion of tapping into it in the future, would you approve if the words "if possible" were added (they were implied)?

EDIT: The reason I ask is that I don't quite understand where your objection comes from. I suspect it comes from you missunderstanding my claims in that post. I would like to clarify, but unforetunately I cannot do so until you clarify your objection.

Its not been proven very well

 

[Mk]

I wonder, If an atom can pop itself out of exsistence then how can it pop itself into exsistance?

I wonder... hey isn't that against the 1st law of Thermodynamics?

 

[Nenad]

ya, cause I was thinking, like Chroot said, the bonding energy has mass. So the bonding energy of let say water has mass? The elecromagnetic force has mass? Polarity has mass? I has no idea that a force like electromagnetism has mass.

 

[HallsofIvy]

No one said that force has mass: energy has mass and force is not energy.

 

[Nenad]

No one said that force has mass: energy has mass and force is not energy.

what is a bond? It is a force holding two atoms together, like an oxygen atom and a Hydrogen atom. This force, according to chroot has mass.

 

[chroot]

A bond is not a force.

- Warren

 

[what_are_electrons]

A large part of the mass of an atom is in the binding energy of the pion reactions that hold it together, just as most of the mass of the protons and neutrons is in the binding energy of the gluons that hold them together. This is measured as mass, i.e. resistance to acceleration. It also gravitates when a sufficient number of atoms are present.

With this picture, I can see that an electron with its 0.000511 GeV/c(2) mass should NOT contain any positive mesonic pions which have unit mass of 0.140 GeV/c(2). Does this mean that pions are mainly in the nucleus and not present in any electron-electron interactions?

Gluons, as I read, have effectively zero mass (0 GeV/c(2)). So where is the mass in the protons and the neutrons if not in the Gluons or the quarks?

Hypothetically:
If the mass of an atom is mainly in the binding energy, and if binding energy were defined as the interaction between a set of electromagnetic force fields, then is it better to define mass in terms of electromagnetic force fields?
...

 

[selfAdjoint]

Gluons, as I read, have effectively zero mass (0 GeV/c(2)). So where is the mass in the protons and the neutrons if not in the Gluons or the quarks?

Hypothetically:
If the mass of an atom is mainly in the binding energy, and if binding energy were defined as the interaction between a set of electromagnetic force fields, then is it better to define mass in terms of electromagnetic force fields?

The mass of the nucleons is in the potential energy of the binding; mass is a form of potential energy in relativity, so this is OK, and as I said (reread my post), this passes the tests for a mass, in regards to acceleration and gravitation. That's where it comes from, and it does all hang together.

About electromagnetic forces, the gluons do not carry EM, they carry the color force (nowadays aka the strong force). This force, unlike EM has three charge/anticharge pairs, and they interact according to the representations of SU(3), whereas EM interacts according to the group U(1). This stuff was discovered in the 1960s and 1970s and it checks out; QCD and the standard model have passed beaucoup tests, and the cottage industry of finding "physics beyond the standard model" experimentally has come up empty. The CP violation you hear so much about does not break the SM; it's more likely to falsify the supersymmetry extensions that have been proposed.

 

[HallsofIvy]

In fission, uranium breaks into Krypton and Barium. The total atomic weights of Krypton and Barium are slightly less that the atomic weight of uranium (even taking into account the two additional neutrons that are produced. That difference in mass is what is converted to energy.