Light Converted to Matter and Back Again

Davidjayjordan said:
e= mcsquared
Click to expand...

When you write it like this, it betrays your unfamiliarity with math and physics. It's written as

E=mc^2

where the ^ indicates an exponent, and E is capitalized to distinguish it from the natural logarith. If you've got a little bit of know-how, you can even write it like

[latex]E=mc^2[/latex]

You aren't impressing anyone here.
 
I imagine a Far Side where two of the scientists are giggling while running around the slowed light cloud in black pajamas and face paint.

Caption: Video of MatterFinger's hit: "Breaking the Law"

or probably something way funnier than that.

RIP Gary Larsen.
 
Ziggurat said:
When you write it like this, it betrays your unfamiliarity with math and physics. It's written as

E=mc^2

where the ^ indicates an exponent, and E is capitalized to distinguish it from the natural logarith. If you've got a little bit of know-how, you can even write it like

latex.php


You aren't impressing anyone here.
Click to expand...


Aww, c'mon ... maybe he just never programmed in BASIC or a higher language! Reminds me of a one-liner, though...

"The instructions said, 'Requires Windows 98 Or Better,' so I installed Linux." :D
 
Ziggurat said:
When you write it like this, it betrays your unfamiliarity with math and physics. It's written as

E=mc^2
Click to expand...

Oh, I thought he meant e (the natural constant) = McSquared (some kind of square hamburger that weighs 2.72 oz.).

This is pretty cool (haw), although I have to agree that it's not very practical. Who cares, though? It's neat-o (I'm not using the same dumb pun twice)!
 
This brings to mind one of the really cool things about light that still keeps me wondering, how light passes through transparent objects, without the photons getting scattered randomly and such, very cool stuff.

What this experiment seems to be showing is that they have taken a transparent medium, and reduced it's re-emission rate to almost zero, so that the electrons are staying in their excited state for much much longer than normal. I'm not sure what real world applications this may serve, but I'd wager there might be more than a few in energy storage and retrieval.
 
Yllanes said:
Edit: Maybe you meant that 'everything we have seen creates equal amounts of matter and antimatter' as in 'all the systems we have seen exhibit baryon number conservation'?
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No I was unfamiliar with there being that much documented CP violation, and was aware that it was one of the interesting problems in high energy physics.
 
Crazycowbob said:
This brings to mind one of the really cool things about light that still keeps me wondering, how light passes through transparent objects, without the photons getting scattered randomly and such, very cool stuff.
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Because solid matter in basically empty, so you are dealing with the interactions of the electromagnetic properties of the material at the spectrum of the light. For example you are largely transparent to X rays. Glass is opaque to IR.

You have to remember that aside from mass and gravity all physical properties stem from the interaction of the electromagnetic forces.(well atomic decay might count as a physical property) but macroscopically it is true.
 
Fnord said:
Aww, c'mon ... maybe he just never programmed in BASIC or a higher language! Reminds me of a one-liner, though...
Click to expand...

Or used Excel or a graphing calculator. Either way he is demonstrating his lack of education in the feild by not useing correct notation.
 
I believe an excited atom is heavier than the same atom in the ground state. The mass difference, however,

latex.php


is very small. Therefore, the claim that light was converted to matter isn't so far off.
 
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kalen said:
I believe an excited atom is heavier than the same atom in the ground state. The mass difference, however,

[qimg]http://www.randi.org/latexrender/latex.php?%5CDelta%20m%20=%20%5Cfrac%7B%5CDelta%20E%7D%7Bc%5E2%7D[/qimg]

is very small. Therefore, the claim that light was converted to matter isn't so far off.
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I don't see why. They are positional potentials. By the same logic as you lift an object up a gravatational potential its mass would increase as well.

Then there is all the issues of relativistic mass vs rest mass, and needing precise definitions of what mass is.
 
When you consider that DRAM holds data for only a few millionths of a second before it has to be refreshed, the implications for computer science start to come into focus. So to speak.
 
Davidjayjordan said:
yes, grunion, finnally modern science is catching up to the ancients in their technology and the greatest technological wonder ever created, the human body.
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Who knows. Perhaps science can even recreate the ancient supercomputer known as the Sacred Abacus. They'll just have to take time off from rewriting the dictionary to include the sacred definition of the word "technological".
 
Ziggurat said:
When you write it like this, it betrays your unfamiliarity with math and physics. It's written as

E=mc^2

where the ^ indicates an exponent, and E is capitalized to distinguish it from the natural logarith. If you've got a little bit of know-how, you can even write it like

[latex]E=mc^2[/latex]

You aren't impressing anyone here.
Click to expand...

Or if you're just some random who posts on a forum using php you could write E = mc2.
 
kalen said:
I believe an excited atom is heavier than the same atom in the ground state. The mass difference, however,

http://www.randi.org/latexrender/latex.php?%5CDelta%20m%20=%20%5Cfrac%7B%5CDelta%20E%7D%7Bc%5E2%7D

is very small. Therefore, the claim that light was converted to matter isn't so far off.
Click to expand...
Maybe I am being dense but upon trapping light in a mass of atoms of the condensate it stopped being light for a time, and became a mass of excited atoms, which for all practical purposes is matter isn't it? It can theoretically be manipulated in that state can't it? This is where I think all the implications for information storage and retrieval become interesting, beyond what our sarcastic respondents had to say above. And then resubsantiated as light in an adjoining condensate? The slow wave that emerges from the condensate isn't really light is it, having none of the properties of light other than it was triggered by a light beam. That is, if the scientist is being honest in her claim.
 
grunion said:
Maybe I am being dense but upon trapping light in a mass of atoms of the condensate it stopped being light for a time, and became a mass of excited atoms, which for all practical purposes is matter isn't it? It can theoretically be manipulated in that state can't it? This is where I think all the implications for information storage and retrieval become interesting, beyond what our sarcastic respondents had to say above. And then resubsantiated as light in an adjoining condensate? The slow wave that emerges from the condensate isn't really light is it, having none of the properties of light other than it was triggered by a light beam. That is, if the scientist is being honest in her claim.
Click to expand...


This was my understanding based on the interview I heard with the researcher on NPR the other day. What really got me was when they got down to the quantum level and tried to measure the quarks (I think it was quarks, I don't understand the science real well) was there was nothing there they could measure. As the researcher put it, it disappeared.


As I said, I don't understand the science or math behind any of it but for sheer coolness factor I thought it was pretty farking amazing.:D



Boo
 
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