Light and Matter (Origins)

by David Turell , Saturday, May 24, 2014, 23:51 (3618 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Sunday, May 25, 2014, 00:03


> dhw: You will have to forgive my ignorance, but I don't suppose I'm the only one who is confused by the statements that matter and energy are interchangeable, ..... Can we say that it's [Hiroshima] an example of a colossal amount of matter being released from a small amount of energy?-No you can't. The bomb released a colossal number of energy containing particles from matter.-> 
> dhw: The scientists whose forthcoming experiment was the starting point of this discussion used the terms light and energy as if they were synonymous, and the experiment will set out to prove that matter can be formed from "pure light". Do we know of any form of light that does not need a material source? By extension, do we know of any form of energy that does not need a material source?-The material source you are proposing is the energy contained in matter. Photons are massless particles of light energy.-> dhw:(This is a genuine question, not an argument.) If we do, why is this experiment so important?
> 
> No wonder I find all this confusing. How can "pure energy" be the most abundant form of matter in the Universe?-Please read the following article by Strassler which explains the various particle families and their mass/energy values. I haven't been clear enough with you, but he is. The 'particles' which really aren't particles but wave smudges in a field. They are the basic particles of matter. Most have mass (not the photon) and all contain energy. All matter is made of these particles, and therefore all matter contains energy. As you can see from the article all of these particles are measured in mass/energy. When the universe was in a state of all plasma, no particles were in a formed state. Therefore matter is made up of energy which can be released as we have discussed, and it can be released in a relatively pure form as energy containing particles in the Standard model as from the atom bomb. So we can create fission, and currently work is being done on fusion of particles as in stars which releases even more energy than fission.-This is why quantum theory is so confusing. The particles contain enormous amounts of energy, but as you know they are hard to pin down as to spin, direction and location when studied. Yet they are the basis of all the solid matter we see and use. -http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/the-known-apparently-elementary-particles/-You will note that the particles combine to make other particles and this zoo of particles combine to make the matter we observe. Technically one can call each particle a matter particle; each particle being a tiny bit of matter. The confusion is that one thinks of them as pure energy, and they are pretty close to that. I think of pure energy as the plasma state when particles are not formed.-Note what the Guardian article said:
"The original idea was written down by two US physicists, Gregory Breit and John Wheeler, in 1934. They worked out that ... very rarely ... two particles of light, or photons, could combine to produce an electron and its antimatter equivalent, a positron. Electrons are particles of matter that form the outer shells of atoms in the everyday objects around us."-By combining the most basic elementary energy particles one gets other 'larger' particles that can be considered 'real' matter. So the real problem is where does the definition of 'real' matter begin? Because it all starts with tiny energy particles combining into bigger particles and finally fusing into elements.-I hope this helps.