Matter created from photons! Lightsabers ahead?

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ruveyn
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02 Oct 2013, 9:57 am

ruveyn wrote:

No light sabers. Photons are bosons and they do not "repel" each other there force can give no rigidity to any aggregate.

Only fermions can lead to rigid bodies.

EDIT: I read the article. It indicates something like a light-sabre can be made theoretically, but nowhere does the technology to do it exist.

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Fnord
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02 Oct 2013, 10:03 am

Kurgan wrote:

Fnord wrote:

Don't get too excited. Those matter/photons require temperatures near absolute zero, and there weren't enough of then to even form the point of a pin. Keep in mind two other lines of research: (1) Sustained fusion power, which is always "... 30 years away"; and (2) teleportation, which so far has not been practical with even a single atom, much less an entire molecule (or a human being).

Don't forget manned missions to Mars. Those are always 20-30 years into the future as well.

I'm still waiting on the day when I can trade in my Prius for a flying car .... or a jet-pack!

Adamantium
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04 Oct 2013, 6:28 pm

sonofghandi wrote:

Many current physicists still believe that electrons are purely matter, despite the fact that have been proven to also have the characteristics of energy waves.

Utter rubbish, unless by "current" you mean "from six decades ago."

My son's sixth grade homework this week included sections on Schrodinger and Bohr, both of whom were dead before either of us were born...
Particle/wave duality is not current by even the remotest stretch of the imagination.

sonofghandi
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05 Oct 2013, 1:12 pm

Adamantium wrote:

sonofghandi wrote:

Many current physicists still believe that electrons are purely matter, despite the fact that have been proven to also have the characteristics of energy waves.

I currently have a physics professor that insists that the wave characteristics of electrons are due to flaws in calculations and experiments, even though he couldn't defend his position. He is in his eighties, though.
When the scientific community has made new discoveries, it often takes a generation or two for the disproven ideas to go away (and sometimes never). There are still a few geologists out there that think plate tectonics is a myth and that the continents somehow float on magma. There are people out there who believe the earth is flat. There are physicists that believe relativistic time and speed are a load of crap (nearly a century after relativity was defined and mathematically proven).

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Adamantium
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06 Oct 2013, 2:41 pm

sonofghandi wrote:

One old guy who was a crackpot even when he was young does not indicate anything about the profession. "I know a black person who is stupid" is not evidence in support of the crapulous "bell curve."

Quote:

When the scientific community has made new discoveries, it often takes a generation or two for the disproven ideas to go away (and sometimes never). There are still a few geologists out there that think plate tectonics is a myth and that the continents somehow float on magma. There are people out there who believe the earth is flat. There are physicists that believe relativistic time and speed are a load of crap (nearly a century after relativity was defined and mathematically proven).

But you are talking about edge cases. The fact that there are people who believe in a flat or hollow earth and others who reject quantum physics or global warming is not evidence that these ideas are controversial anywhere but in the minds of those few crackpots.

The myth of the lone genius is also massively overplayed. Scientific work takes place in the context of the work of others--this transmission of knowledge across time and political borders is one of the triumphs of civilization. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/techist.html

wozeree
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15 Oct 2013, 8:11 pm

Can somebody help me understand - does this violate the rule of conservation of energy? If it doesn't, why not? Thanks.

sonofghandi
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16 Oct 2013, 7:31 am

mass=energy=mass

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Fnord
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16 Oct 2013, 7:36 am

sonofghandi wrote:

mass=energy=mass

No ... Energy = Mass x Speed of Light x Speed of Light

They are equivalent, but not equal.

Mass can be converted to energy, and energy can (theoretically) be converted to mass, but the efficiencies are less than 100%.

sonofghandi
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16 Oct 2013, 9:09 am

Fnord wrote:

sonofghandi wrote:

mass=energy=mass

I guess my post wasn't very clear. What I meant to imply is that all matter is comprised of energy and all energy has the potential for mass. I suppose using = was not the best choice.

As for E=mc2, you technically also have to take into account the Lorentz factor (different for each relativistic speed) for anything greater than 1/10 c.

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wozeree
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16 Oct 2013, 10:15 am

That's kind of my point though - photons have no mass, yet they are exhibiting mass now. It's different.

I asked people on another forum last night and someone said it's not real mass, it's just made to act as if it had mass. Not sure I understand that either.

ruveyn
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16 Oct 2013, 10:19 am

There are no light sabres. There are some interesting theoretical suppositions that need to be studied further.

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sonofghandi
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16 Oct 2013, 10:44 am

wozeree wrote:

Not sure where you stand in physics, so I'll try to keep brief.
Electrons exhibit the characteristics of both particles and waves. This is something that came as a shock to the physics world a while back, as electrons definitely have mass that can be measured. I won't get into electron traps and detection probability or quantum tunneling (you could Google those if you want), but there are cases where an electron is basically a wave function that has no mass until acted upon by an outside force that causes the wave function to collapse, causing the electron to "appear" in a specific location.
This new research on photons is basically showing that these packets of energy (that have been considered as having no mass) can also exhibit the properties of particles in certain circumstances, which was previously a theory scorned by most in the quantum field.

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