It is evident from Einstein’s well-known equation E=mc2 that matter can be converted into energy. Though humans have also accomplished it in settings like nuclear reactors, this occurs naturally in the universe. We also learn from the equation that the contrary is true. The creation of matter from energy is a plausible idea, and researchers at Imperial College London are attempting to achieve just that.
Under the direction of Professor Steven Rose, the team is attempting to accomplish their goal by simultaneously hitting the same target chamber with two extremely powerful lasers, one with 1,000 times and the other with 1 million times the energy of visible light. The method is based on the Breit-Wheeler process, which was first proposed in 1934 and showed that two colliding photons might theoretically produce an electron and positron, or its antimatter twin.
In an attempt to replicate this, researchers have begun introducing more energy particles, but they have not been successful thus far. However, in 2014, Professor Rose put out a strategy for producing the Breit-Wheeler process in isolation from other particles. This is the strategy that is being tried out right now.
Professor Rose said in a statement, “This would be a pure demonstration of Einstein’s famous equation that relates energy and mass: E=mc2, which tells us how much energy is produced when matter is turned into energy.” “We are performing the same operation backward, converting photon energy into mass, or m=E/c2.”
Other teams are also making great efforts to “break the vacuum” and convert energy into matter. Many teams are trying various strategies, including applying brute force with the strongest lasers ever created. This makes the Breit-Wheeler process possible with a more advanced optical configuration.
Dr. Stuart Mangles, a co-leader of the team, said, “When Gregory Breit and John Wheeler first proposed the mechanism in 1934, they used the then new theory of the interaction between light and matter known as quantum electrodynamics (QED).” “The ‘two-photon Breit-Wheeler process’ has never been observed, in contrast to all other fundamental predictions of QED that have since been empirically proven.”
Making matter out of energy is more than just checking boxes. It has the potential to improve knowledge of some high-energy astrophysical processes.
The biggest explosions in the universe and one of physics’ biggest unanswered mysteries, gamma-ray bursts, are similar to a mechanism that is critical in the first 100 seconds of the universe and that we would be replicating if we can demonstrate it now, Dr. Mangles said.
