Quartile Posted August 25, 2008 Share Posted August 25, 2008 Wikipedia says that the collision of two photons can create mass. This sounds to me like a chemical reaction of sorts.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaynos Posted August 25, 2008 Share Posted August 25, 2008 Not a chemical reaction. A "nice" was of thinking about it in words is that we know the universe is full of vacuum fluctuations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy) if two of these particles are hit by a photon of high enough energy (higher than the rest mass energy E=mc2) then the photons will be destroyed and the two virtual particles will become real. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_creation Pairs of photons don't interact strongly at all, so to answer your question more properly can you like to the wp page and section where it said it? It's probably talking about this or something very simlar caused by the interaction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quartile Posted August 25, 2008 Author Share Posted August 25, 2008 should have posted it to begin with thanks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-photon_physics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaynos Posted August 25, 2008 Share Posted August 25, 2008 Yep so basically it's the process I described above happening over a very short time span before recombining, twice and then the particles which are created from that interacting... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quartile Posted August 25, 2008 Author Share Posted August 25, 2008 (edited) Is there anywhere this process happens naturally? Stars come to mind, but do stars sustain a high enough energy level for this to occur? It seems like its a positive feedback phenomena that yields matter, I think? Edited August 25, 2008 by Quartile Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaynos Posted August 25, 2008 Share Posted August 25, 2008 Well it could feasibly happen anywhere, but the probability is very very low, it becomes higher the higher the energy of the photons, the longer their path length and the higher their intensity. I suspect the problem with it occurring in stars is that the path length of photons in stars is VERY short. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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