Scientists Create Matter From Pure Light, Proving the Breit-Wheeler Effect
owl writes:
Science News link: https://science-news.co/scientists-create-matter-from-pure-light-proving-the-breit-wheeler-effect/
Archive link: https://archive.is/AeYlu
The Breit-Wheeler effect, postulated as early as 1934, describes the conversion of light into matter. With the theory physicists Gregory Breit and John Wheeler were able to prove that when two high-energy photons collide, a positron and an electron arise, i.e. matter is formed. An experiment has now proven this theory for the first time. In the context of his special theory of relativity, Einstein described the natural law of the equivalence of mass and energy (E = mc^2) as early as 1905. According to this, energy and matter are equivalent and can be converted into one another. One direction of matter and energy is omnipresent. It takes place permanently in the sun, for example when atomic nuclei fuse and energy is given off in the form of radiation.
[...] A team led by Zhangbu Xu from the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) has now experimentally tested the almost hundred-year-old theory using the STAR detector on the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). According to their publication in the Physical Review Letters, they collided gold nuclei accelerated to 99.99 percent of the speed of light. They examined the released decay products for pairs of electrons and positrons whose mass distribution, energy and quantum states corresponded to those of the Breit-Wheeler effect. In total, the physicists were able to find 6,085 electron-positron pairs with the appropriate features. In an additional experiment, the scientists also checked whether the photons generated during the collision had the characteristics of normal light particles, which was also confirmed.
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