Scientists work out how to turn light into matter
Imperial College London physicists have discovered how to create matter from light, a development that validates a theory first proposed by Breit and Wheeler in 1934.
According to Imperial, Breit and Wheeler suggested that it should be possible to turn light into matter by smashing together two photons to create an electron and a positron.
The calculation was found to be theoretically feasible but Breit and Wheeler said that they never expected anybody to physically demonstrate their prediction. It has never been observed in the laboratory and past experiments to test it have required the addition of massive high-energy particles.
The new research, published in Nature Photonics, shows for the first time how Breit and Wheeler’s theory could be proven in practice. This ‘photon-photon collider’, which would convert light directly into matter using technology that is already available, would be a new type of high-energy physics experiment, recreating a process that was important in the first 100 seconds of the universe and that is also seen in gamma ray bursts, which are the biggest explosions in the universe.
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