{"id":77046,"date":"2018-03-20T18:24:07","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T01:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/scientists-aim-to-use-lasers-to-turn-light-into-matter"},"modified":"2018-03-20T18:24:07","modified_gmt":"2018-03-21T01:24:07","slug":"scientists-aim-to-use-lasers-to-turn-light-into-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/scientists-aim-to-use-lasers-to-turn-light-into-matter","title":{"rendered":"Scientists aim to use lasers to turn light into matter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-aim-to-use-lasers-to-turn-light-into-matter.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imperial.ac.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Imperial College London<\/a> are attempting to use powerful lasers turn light into matter, potentially proving the 84-year-old theory known as the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Breit%E2%80%93Wheeler_process\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Breit-Wheeler process<\/a>. According to this theory, it is technically possible to turn light into matter by smashing two photons to create a positron and an electron. While previous efforts to achieve this feat have required added high-energy particles, the Imperial scientists believe they have discovered a method that does not need additional energy to function. \u201cThis would be a pure demonstration of Einstein\u2019s famous equation that relates energy and mass: E=mc2, which tells us how much energy is produced when matter is turned to energy,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imperial.ac.uk\/news\/185368\/experiments-underway-turn-light-into-matter\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">explained Imperial Professor Steven Rose<\/a>. \u201cWhat we are doing is the same but backwards: turning photon <a href=\"https:\/\/inhabitat.com\/tag\/energy\/\">energy<\/a> into mass, i.e. m=E\/c2.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/inhabitat.com\/scientists-aim-to-use-lasers-to-turn-light-into-matter\/\">https:\/\/inhabitat.com\/scientists-aim-to-use-lasers-to-turn-light-into-matter\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists at Imperial College London are attempting to use powerful lasers turn light into matter, potentially proving the 84-year-old theory known as the Breit-Wheeler process. According to this theory, it is technically possible to turn light into matter by smashing two photons to create a positron and an electron. While previous efforts to achieve this [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-science","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}