Scientists create matter from light for the first time.

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In a stunning demonstration of one of Einstein's most famous equations, physicists are claiming to have created matter from pure light for the very first time.

Primary Source:  This Physical Review Letters Article 

Secondary Source:  This Space Magazine Article 

Thank you for sharing this. I knew that they were working towards this experiment for a few years now. I see that they are ionizing gold nuclei to do a near miss pass to created the virtual photons. It is a good workaround, since they cannot currently make a direct photon-photon interaction with high enough energy to get the pair production process to work right. The reverse process can be experimentally done if you happen to have the right anti-matter target handy. They often use positrons for this, as it is a natural decay product from certain radioactive isotopes. The resulting photons are in the high x-ray range.

Hopefully it will give clues to the inner workings of String Theory. I will be happy either way if it proves or disproves some of my theories on this subject. Either way, it will get us closer to how matter/anti-matter is formed.

Nuclear power generation has more-or-less "proven" the matter to energy conversion process, and the nuclear bombs were based on this principle.

With this new discovery, however, I am just waiting for a Federation Food Replicator™ to become available...

The catch is that the matter created from light can't actually exist on its own outside of the holodeck.