Can matter be created from light?

[Qutzupalotl]

Matter arises from light? We finally know the answer to this question!
For the first time, experiments have shown that matter can be created from the collision of photons — that is, from light.

….
How matter arises from light
The Breit-Wheeler process is a theory that says that if two photons — or quanta of light — collide hard enough, an electron-positron pair — or matter and antimatter — will be created. This is what happened for the first hundred seconds after the Big Bang: pairs of particles and antiparticles began to emerge from the cloud of colliding high-energy photons.

The theory is based on slightly earlier calculations by Paul Dirac and follows from Einstein’s work. So it has a very strong foundation, but it presents a gigantic challenge to experimental physicists. How to design a test that would confirm it? To do so, you need the right photons — gamma photons from gamma rays. Obtaining them is not feasible at the moment because no one has yet figured out how to build a laser that emits gamma radiation.

….

And here we return to the Breit-Wheeler theory. When it so happens that two gold ions pass each other very close, two clouds of accompanying photons bump into each other and the quanta start to collide. These collisions cannot be registered, but the resulting electrons and positrons can.
And this is what scientists at Brookhaven Laboratory have managed to do.

more:
https://medium.com/darkmatterarticles/matter-arises-from-light-we-finally-know-the-answer-to-this-question-84f3d30b0260

[SCantiGOP]

2. Agreed

This would be a major new understanding of both the origin of our universe and the way matter and energy are related.

[Jerry2144]

3. Yes

It happens all the time. Pair production produces an electron-positron pair when a greater than 1.22 MeV gamma ray photon passes near an atomic nucleus.

[packman]

4. Is this a chicken-egg thing?

A photon is produced whenever an electron in a higher-than-normal orbit falls back to its normal orbit. During the fall from high energy to normal energy, the electron emits a photon -- a packet of energy -- with very specific characteristics.

Need electrons to create photos which is a measure of light so photons created initial matter - Guess you had to be there at the Big Bang to understand it all

Ain't science wonderful

[cstanleytech]

5. Don't plants in essence absorb light and use it to grow?

In that case the trick is actually finding a way we can do what plants do and manipulate enough light to change it into matter.

[cstanleytech]

8. Without light to absorb they lack the energy to make use of the soil.

[sl8]

9. Right, but that's using energy to move matter from one place (and form) to another. nt

[xocetaceans]

6. That Medium writer did not seem to include a clear citation of the sources for that Medium post....

This seems to be a description of the paper to which said writer seems to be referring and the paper itself:

Collisions of Light Produce Matter/Antimatter from Pure Energy
Study demonstrates a long-predicted process for generating matter directly from light — plus evidence that magnetism can bend polarized photons along different paths in a vacuum

July 28, 2021

UPTON, NY—Scientists studying particle collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory—have produced definitive evidence for two physics phenomena predicted more than 80 years ago. The results were derived from a detailed analysis of more than 6,000 pairs of electrons and positrons produced in glancing particle collisions at RHIC and are published in Physical Review Letters.

The primary finding is that pairs of electrons and positrons—particles of matter and antimatter—can be created directly by colliding very energetic photons, which are quantum “packets” of light. This conversion of energetic light into matter is a direct consequence of Einstein’s famous E=mc2 equation, which states that energy and matter (or mass) are interchangeable. Nuclear reactions in the sun and at nuclear power plants regularly convert matter into energy. Now scientists have converted light energy directly into matter in a single step.

The second result shows that the path of light traveling through a magnetic field in a vacuum bends differently depending on how that light is polarized. Such polarization-dependent deflection (known as birefringence) occurs when light travels through certain materials. (This effect is similar to the way wavelength-dependent deflection splits white light into rainbows.) But this is the first demonstration of polarization-dependent light-bending in a vacuum.

Both results depend on the ability of RHIC’s STAR detector—the Solenoid Tracker at RHIC—to measure the angular distribution of particles produced in glancing collisions of gold ions moving at nearly the speed of light.

...

https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=119023

Measurement of e+e− Momentum and Angular Distributions from Linearly Polarized Photon Collisions
J. Adam et al. (STAR Collaboration)
Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 052302 – Published 27 July 2021


Abstract

The Breit-Wheeler process which produces matter and antimatter from photon collisions is experimentally investigated through the observation of 6085 exclusive electron-positron pairs in ultraperipheral Au+Au collisions at √sNN=200  GeV. The measurements reveal a large fourth-order angular modulation of cos4Δϕ=(16.8±2.5)% and smooth invariant mass distribution absent of vector mesons ( ϕ, ω, and ρ ) at the experimental limit of ≤0.2% of the observed yields. The differential cross section as a function of e+e− pair transverse momentum P⊥ peaks at low value with √⟨P2⊥⟩=38.1±0.9  MeV and displays a significant centrality dependence. These features are consistent with QED calculations for the collision of linearly polarized photons quantized from the extremely strong electromagnetic fields generated by the highly charged Au nuclei at ultrarelativistic speed. The experimental results have implications for vacuum birefringence and for mapping the magnetic field which is important for emergent QCD phenomena.

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.052302

[hunter]

13. The equal sign in Einstein's famous equation is frequently misinterpreted.

It doesn't mean "can be converted to..."

It means "is..."

The aspect of energy we measure as "mass" when multiplied by the constant c squared *is* the energy of that mass.

This is more experimental evidence of that.

At the energies humans are familiar with, adding electromagnetic energy (photons) to a system doesn't manifest itself as a fountain of massive particles.

If you had a hypothetical "super gamma ray laser" the beam would already consist of a stew of photons and massive particles, all different manifestations of the same energy. If this beam was exposed to a hypothetical "super magnetic field" it would divert charged particles out of the beam.

This experiment is detecting massive particles, in this case electrons and positrons, arising from such a high energy electromagnetic stew.