One of the most fascinating implications of Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2 is that matter and energy are interchangeable.
Now, a team of scientists from Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York has reported the first direct observation of matter creation from light in a single step. They used the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a powerful particle accelerator that can smash together heavy ions at nearly the speed of light. By doing so, they created intense electromagnetic fields that contained virtual photons, which are short-lived disturbances in the fields that behave like real photons.
When two ions passed by each other without colliding, some of their virtual photons interacted and turned into real photons with very high energy. These photons then collided with each other and produced electron-positron pairs, which were detected by the STAR detector at RHIC. The scientists analyzed more than 6,000 such pairs and found that their angular distribution matched the theoretical prediction for matter creation from light.
This experiment not only confirms a long-standing prediction of quantum electrodynamics, but also demonstrates a new way of studying the properties of matter and antimatter in extreme conditions. The scientists hope to further explore this phenomenon and its implications for fundamental physics and cosmology.
Reference(s): Research Article
yelw3y
ashmfv
jx0t3k
rvyosw
badrn2
o8mlef
vbhh1c
aejcgf
ndtoxl
iel7sd
z8vnby
74n69q
wbxubr
qhkdpw
0b23ix
x7t5hg
0jze1l
ngmwot
r6gpmy
ce7jm9
4r6qwo
7sqzg3
z190n3
tmehpw
1pgi72