Nobel Prize Worthy? Scientists Just Created Matter From Light

 

light is the source of all life for millennia our ancestors knew this in Their hearts they worshiped the very sun that kept the evils of the dark at bay our species have derived theologies and mythologies on this very concept the segregation of light and matter has been integral to those beliefs but what if we could produce light in a lab would that disprove the very theories we have come to believe as fact well what if we could create matter from light itself would that change anything at all what if i told you we have already done it welcome the Science Reads today we will explore how a recent lab experiment has completely changed our understanding of the universe let there be light ever since the 20th century we as a species have made tremendous advancements in our understanding of how the universe came to be from the revolutionizing equations concocted from the genius mind of Warner Heisenberg to the brilliant discoveries of the physical world by Albert Einstein we have come a long way from our cave dwelling sun worshiping ancestors we all know the famous little equation that changed the world back in 1916 when Albert Einstein unveiled to the world the theory of relativity e equals m c squared as our schools have taught us Einstein was able to mathematically prove that a minute amount of matter can release an unbelievable amount of energy if you paid any attention during class you would know that this is how we were able to concoct all of our nuclear technology and infamously this is how the manhattan project was able to put a stop to one of the most horrific modern sins in humanity world war ii while scholars could debate whether using a nuclear bomb to stop our enemies was ethical or not we can all agree that this mushroom-shaped mammoth is proof of einstein's equation in motion modern miracle logic states that if one tiny fraction of an atom can be transformed into a huge amount of energy the reverse should be equally true right well yes this has been known to physicists for decades well at least theoretically in 1934 two brilliant minds came together to add even more depth to Einstein's reconstruction of the newtonian theory of gravity physicists Gregory Bright and John Wheeler suggested that if we could somehow smash light particles or photons into one another at extreme velocities nearing the speed of light the result of that magnificent collision would produce matter this endeavor came to be known as the bright wheeler process here is a simplified version of how this entire process works essentially when photons are launched at great speeds facing each other they would eventually crash this anatomical fender bender would produce a pair of matter and antimatter an electron which is negatively charged and a positron which is positively charged these two geniuses did not only work out the convoluted math that such an event would entail they were also able to conceive of a

 method to be able to prove this in a lab unfortunately for these two brilliant men the technology of the 1930s had not caught up with their intellect and they were unable to actually prove the bright wheeler process though we have tried to accomplish this delicate experiment in the past our technology was unable to capture all the data we needed to make a definite conclusion we tried to prove this process in 1997 in an experiment conducted by the slac national accelerator laboratory at Stanford university in this experiment scientists used electron beams and lasers to be able to create an electron positron pair from a photon however the machines were not able to fully capture the intricate details underneath this process though we would need to create high-powered lasers with gamma-ray capabilities in order to have enough energy to make the experiment as pure as possible sadly our technology is not quite there yet we might be a few decades from being able to create devices that produce gamma rays but scientists in the united states have found a way to definitively prove this theorem a few years back in 2018 a group of scientists working in the relativistic heavy ion collider rhic at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory were able to conduct an experiment that detailed the bright wheeler process with extreme precision because of the aforementioned

 limitations of our technology

 this group of researchers had to be a little more creative to prove this in their laboratory instead of using lasers and electron beams the team used heavy ions in this case gold and shot it in opposite directions without actually colliding the strong positive charge and extremely high speeds of the ions create a circular magnetic field and a cloud of photons that travel with the particles through the collider as the gold ions skim each other their halos of light particles interact and produce the matter antimatter pairs that were predicted so many decades ago while rhic was able to demonstrate the bright wheeler process the solenoid tracker better known as the star detector was the instrument that actually observed measured and confirmed the achievement proving mankind has been able to make

 something out of nothing two birds one stone creating matter from light is an amazing achievement by itself but the experiment demonstrated another amazing breakthrough in the world of physics a phenomenon known as vacuum birefringence was observed as an after effect of the photon experiment this concept also dates back to nearly a century ago it was conceived in 1946 by the minds of hans Heinrich Euler and warner Heisenberg they predicted that powerful magnetic fields would distort the path of light traveling inside a vacuum though observations of this phenomenon have been done in the past it has never been reproduced or observed on earth this phenomenon can be observed in neutron stars they have a very powerful magnetic field that distorts the path of light in the vacuum of space similar to a crystal when you point a laser directly at the center the light is refracted in many seemingly random directions this discovery has opened another interesting door into the world of quantum mechanics and perhaps will help us unravel some of the quantum mysteries that have plagued us for decades not only that but because of the precise measurements we got during experiments vacuum birefringence could help us refine many of the equations that deal with measuring the exact path and velocity of photons this major breakthrough of both of these principles will revolutionize our understanding of the mechanics that shape our reality the god particle these two labs are not the only ones that have been able to create matter from photons the well-known large hadron collider in the heart of Switzerland ran a similar experiment where scientists were able to transform energy into mass the experiment from the LHC demonstrated the existence of the w boson w bosons are short-lived forms of matter that mediate the weak nuclear force one of the four fundamental forces of nature however compared to electrons w bosons are an extremely exotic form of matter that decays within a tiny fraction of a second this concept was discovered by Sheldon

 Glacial Abdus Salam and Stephen Weinberg these three won the Nobel prize in

 physics in 1973 for proving that at

 high enough energies electromagnetism

 and the weak force are one in the same

 for centuries scientists believe that weak force and electromagnetism were completely separate forces this has huge implications for the future of physics thanks to the discovery of these bosons and the fact that electromagnetic forces and weak forces are essentially the same one day we may be able to find the holy grail of all of science the complete unification of all forces the theory of everything or as it's known around the scientific circles the unified grand theory we could go much much deeper into

 the mechanics of a boson particle

 but perhaps we will leave that subject for another episode if you would like to take a peek inside the bizarre world of quantum mechanics be sure to subscribe and turn the bell on for notifications thank you guys so much for reading until the end i hope you enjoyed the article and learned something new along the way do you think this experiment will completely revolutionize our understanding of the universe or do you think this won't make much of an impact at all whatever you think let us know in the comments down below and as always thanks for reading we'll see you next time