A massive development within technological breakthroughs have led us to this, making matter from light.
In this blog we will investigate this very briefly as to how they have managed to crack this almost impossible feat with scientific ingenuity.
(Left) CAD process illustration of generating matter.
Firstly what is matter?
All matter within the universe is made from something called “baryonic matter”, however there are different types of matter this is the most common form of it.
Wait this isn’t new?
“Nope”, as this theory was designed back in 1934 by two US scientists Gregory Breit and John Wheeler, both of these men talked about a theoretical notion of simply smashing together photons together hard enough. By doing this they believed that it would create an electron and positron, they were right. But this theory couldn’t be proven for another 78 years as the technology just wasn’t available to them at the time of the idea.
So what happened to the idea?
However now two scientists boffins from Imperial College London, and one from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics who was visiting the UK have come up with a way they think this will work. Both previously working within fusion energy, they considered that their theory could be applied to the Breit-Wheeler theory, proposing a photon to photon collider.
How this system works
Step 1
A bean is applied to a surface of a slab of carefully designed gold, the beams purpose is to speed up and fire electrons at almost the speed of light. As the electrons hit the gold they lose their potential energy and pass it on to the gold.
Step 2
This will in turn heat the gold up to extreme temperatures, and give the electrons within the gold enough energy to move around and break free. This process will create a massive energy potential across the surface of the gold. The energy from the electrons here will emit photons as they move in and out of the lattice structure of the gold and its valance shells.
Step3
You now have the gold burning bright with photons, however these photons will have around a billion times more energy than conventional light. The light being emitted here would be directed into something called a hohlraum (A tiny gold can).
Step 4
Inside the tiny gold the light will be reflected from all the walls, creating a well of photonic energy. The photons here will continue to be reflected until they run out of potential energy, however as mentioned before the potential energy here is so enormous they will continue to move around within the hohlraum for a calculated period of time.
Step 5
Then a second laser will be directed to shoot into the hohlraum, the second laser also shooting supercharged phonons. Once this process is set into action the photon to photon collision may occur. The team of scientists worked out here that this possible collision will create 10,000 electron – positron pairs. This positron is a form of antimatter and although it may not be baryonic matter it still falls under the category of matter under the eyes of science. So that is how the scientists today have littlery created “antimatter” with just light.