Theoretical physics breakthrough: Generating matter and antimatter from the vacuum

One wonders if this equation would permit a "self sustained" reactor? Zero Point Modulus, anyone?

1) Energy charges laser
2) Laser fires, producing a stream of particle/anti-particle pairs.
3) particles annihilate, producing energy
4) Energy is harvested.
5) Repeat.

If it's true that "empty" space is really composed or particle/anti-particle pairs, then this would basicly be an ideal, almost "magical" power supply for deep space ships, literally like the ZPM from Stargate...

"it could be possible to create something out of nothing"

Nothing except...

"an ultra-high-intensity laser beam and a two-mile-long particle accelerator"

Scientists are philosophical retards...no really they are...

Either I read this wrong or they're saying they can theoretically break the laws of thermodynamics; "Matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but can be converted from one to the other." Could someone please clarify?

Either I read this wrong or they're saying they can theoretically break the laws of thermodynamics; "Matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but can be converted from one to the other." Could someone please clarify?

As I read it they can do nothing of the kind. They require massive amounts of energy to produce these particles out of "nothing".

If they could violate the first law then you'd have perpetual motion machines etc etc....

EXTREMELY misleading article.

WOW! This has got to be the most mind-blowing and relevant article I have ever seen on this site. If this is true, it would rock everything to the core! It would be nice to find something else in the vacuum, like other dimensions curled on themselves. AWESOME!

"But in a strong electromagnetic field, this annihilation, which is typically a sink mechanism, can be the source of new particles"

What part of a strong electromagnetic field is nothing? How can someone be so smart and so ****ing stupid at the same time?

As I read it they can do nothing of the kind. They require massive amounts of energy to produce these particles out of "nothing".

If they could violate the first law then you'd have perpetual motion machines etc etc....

EXTREMELY misleading article.

Actually, you miss the point.

While in perhaps the purest sense this doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics because you are converting "vaccuum" to "matter/anti-matter" and then energy, it does, however, potentially give rise to theoretically, arbitrarily "infinite" energy, since your "fuel" is "nothing" itself. Provided my scenario above is one day possible.

Perhaps our inter-stellar space ship need not carry "fuel" with it at all. Perhaps the matter and anti-matter can be extracted from "nothing".

Certainly seems safer than trying to store thousands of tons of anti-hydrogen in a magnetic field for years or decades on end...

You're not actually getting matter out of nothing. ... Here's a theory. What if the expansion of the universe is actually a result of the continuous annihilation of virtual particles and anti-particles? By stealing energy from the vacuum (by converting it to matter), you slow down the expansion. So essentially you convert the "space" that would have existed due to faster expansion into "matter" that wouldn't have existed had the expansion continued without interference. ... In other words, you're slowing down the expansion. That's where the vacuum energy comes from.

I know this all sounds crazy, but I'm convinced that space/time/matter/energy can be converted into one another.

While in perhaps the purest sense this doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics because you are converting "vaccuum" to "matter/anti-matter"

And apparently using a large amount of energy to do it in the first place.

There is little doubt we live in a "false vacuum". We know there are virtual particles etc. If we can tap that energy that's ALREADY THERE without putting more in than we get out...well great.

But don't bullshit me and tell me your making something out of nothing and violating the laws of thermodynamics. It's a ****ing insult to everyone's intelligence who reads the article.

Uh, they're ripping a vacuum's virtual particles apart enough that they don't recombine before they can be observed. Happens it needs a LOT of energy and/or a ferocious electro-magnetic and/or gravity field-gradient. At most, they can recover the pair-production's energy. The rest is waste, so ZPM contenders need not apply...

Here's an interesting thought while messing around with this stuff..

http://en.wikiped...e_vacuum

Look under the Vacuum metastability event header...

E=MC2. Solve for M instead of E.

Why is this news?

As I read it they can do nothing of the kind. They require massive amounts of energy to produce these particles out of "nothing".

If they could violate the first law then you'd have perpetual motion machines etc etc...

No, to produce the necessary shape of space to trigger the phenomena on Earth would require an electron accelerator combined with a laser. These conditions exist in nature near black holes and neutron stars.

In that case, the particles literally are produced from empty space. It is possible that the equivalent energy gets sucked from the neutron star or black hole. But give me a while to work through the math. Decades ago Steven Hawking famously showed that pair production near a black hole could result in something from nothing. In that case, the energy is balanced by reducing the mass of the black hole. The Hawking Effect wouldn't work for neutron stars, so I need to read the paper. I suspect that some of the energy comes from an electron. ;-)

In that case, the particles literally are produced from empty space.

No they aren't, they were already there in the form of vacuum energy.

Decades ago Steven Hawking famously showed that pair production near a black hole could result in something from nothing.

He did nothing of the kind. He showed that black holes can lose mass from virtual particle production near (and I mean VERY near) the event horizon. The black hole loses the energy the "created" particle takes away from the horizon.

Look it up....

http://en.wikiped...adiation

WOW!

Your enthusiasm is truly laudable, krundoloss. But this isn’t new or particularly impressive within the modern theoretical physics context.

Pair production is old news at this point. It’s how most of the secondary particle showers are created at the research colliders, and it’s how black holes are predicted to “evaporate” via Hawking radiation.

This method is new, AFAIK, and interesting, but frankly there are easier, better and more efficient ways to create particles. I’m not really sure why these guys are talking like they’ve personally confirmed the Dirac Sea when it’s been proven for many decades now.

Here’s a far more brilliant concept, imo, that details a passive method of pair production using the vacuum suppression of the Casimir effect, with an eye toward interstellar propulsion. It was written by NASA’s high-energy propulsion physics manager:

ANTIMATTER PRODUCTION AT A POTENTIAL BOUNDARY
http://gltrs.grc....1116.pdf

This is like Hawking Radiation, but without the black hole: particle-antiparticle pairs are torn apart. One falls into the hole, the other flies out.

Edit: Damn, Modernmystic beat me to it.

From the paper:
V. CONCLUSION
We see that the laser-beam interaction may be accompanied by multiple pair production.
The initial energy of a beam electron is efficiently spent for creating pairs with significantly
lower energies as well as softer gamma-photons.

I.e. no extra energy is created (no ZPM!), merely energy is converted from one form to another.

Just get rid of the idea that vacuum = nothing, and there is no problem with this theory. The idea of nothing is a myth because even without this theoretical discovery, the vacuum is filled with all manner of radiation, subatomic particles, etc. Hardly "nothing" . . .

He did nothing of the kind. He showed that black holes can lose mass from virtual particle production near (and I mean VERY near) the event horizon. The black hole loses the energy the "created" particle takes away from the horizon.

I have no need to look it up. You need to understand what is going on better. The initial pair production is "something out of nothing" the later balancing of the total energy in the universe occurs when one of the particles falls into a black hole. During the period between the pair production and one of the particles falling into the black hole, the total mass energy of the universe is higher.

As for the very near part, you are again misinterpreting. The pair production can happen anywhere in space. The PROBABILITY of pair production anywhere falls off rapidly with the distance from any local black holes, but is never zero. (Well assuming that there is at least one black hole within a few billion light years.)

When pre "big bang" was a vacuum , and the whole of the universe came out of it ,
then it's of course interesting that humans could be able of mimicking that .
A start up with a few particles from nothing or a vacuum .

Hm, having little knowledge of this field, but given a reasonable thought, I would think that matter and antimatter would be created not from nothing(vacuum itself, or like it's popular to say zero energy field), but from electromagnetic field - laser light

What's so breaking about it? The sensationalism? The pair formation has been observed with gamma ray photons in strong electric fields many times before many years - without any electrons at all!

If I would say, it's impossible, I would be labelled as a crackpot immediately.

Cool, a laser that breaks semantics into its component parts.

I have no need to look it up. You need to understand what is going on better. The initial pair production is "something out of nothing"

No it isn't that energy is in the vacuum to start with. It's been there since the big bang. It's YOU who need to beef up your understanding.

During the period between the pair production and one of the particles falling into the black hole, the total mass energy of the universe is higher.

Higher than what? The total mass energy of the universe is what it is, it doesn't change.

As for the rest of your condescending screed, the POINT is that the laws of thermodynamics are not changed by this experiment, hawking radiation, or ANY other process we currently know about...period.

When pre "big bang" was a vacuum , and the whole of the universe came out of it ,
then it's of course interesting that humans could be able of mimicking that .
A start up with a few particles from nothing or a vacuum .

The vacuum was created in the big bang, there was no "pre-big bang vacuum".

This is just an another example/evidence of theorists overpopulation, which I'm talking about - this result is actually an achievement of engineers, not the basic science. With increasing technological progress many fundamental experiments are gradually more & more easier to do - but does it change the underlying physical theory? Of course not.

We can say, group of theorists (and journalists) is parasiting on work of engineers, because of lack of original insights & results. With such approach we could re-search and repeat whole classical physics again and again for the money of tax payers, until they don't realize, the very some old tricks are demonstrated again and again.

An analogy to approach of alchemists of medieval era (who faked their results because of lack of actual findings) is apparent here.

It is nothing new, 0 = (+1) + (-1), just a physical proof.

"it could be possible to create something out of nothing"

Nothing except...

"an ultra-high-intensity laser beam and a two-mile-long particle accelerator"

Scientists are philosophical retards...no really they are...

Actually, it's not the scientists, it's the science reporters. Complex ideas often get dumbed down, warped and twisted between leaving a scientist's mouth and appearing in print.

"it could be possible to create something out of nothing"

Nothing except...

"an ultra-high-intensity laser beam and a two-mile-long particle accelerator"

Scientists are philosophical retards...no really they are...

made me laugh

..Actually, it's not the scientists, it's the science reporters.

A very deep synergy/symbiosis exists here. We shouldn't forget, what we are reading by now is 1:1 transcript of official newsletter of Michigan university - so that journalism is supposed to form just a very thin information layer in this particular example. This article is a product of scientists itself, not journalists.

This article does not explain exactly how this experiment is carried out but it would seems to me the laser light and the electron would be heading in opposite directions

Now if that is the case the particle pairs are not created out of nothing, they are created out of the laser light. The electron and the laser light are combining at gamma ray frequencies creating the particle anti-particle pairs.

Instead of more or less correct speculations, why not read the original paper here: http://arxiv.org/...09.0703.
The authors explain why they shoot a laser beam in the opposite direction of the electron beam, and also give a short review of the particle pair creation processes involved.

No they aren't, they were already there in the form of vacuum energy.

Shrug. Unless you want to assume that we live in a false vacuum, the vacuum energy is an intrinsic part of 'nothing.' Stated differently the vacuum is the lowest energy state of empty space.

However, if the space is near (in the sense of millions of light years) to black holes, photons and other particles can spontaneously appear in that volume of space. If you track those particles backwards, they will seem to have come from a black hole. Another way of looking at what happens is that a virtual particle is emitted from the black hole and later turns into a real particle in that volume of space. The net result in either case is that an integration of energy at the surface of the volume will show net energy production at some points in time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

I checked and the math looks right there. Believing the words not the math can misled you

aristoteles said once "if you give me a long enough lever I can move the earth" maybe the 2 mile lever is what we need to leverage siphoning off the Dirac sea

Our idea of a vacume as a nothingness is all in the eyes of the observer, for instance butterflies can see UV light (in fact flowers are colored to enhance UV reflection), while humans can not, does that mean, because we cant see, its not there? No, we found technology to level the playfield, to register UV light with sensors and even harness it with solarcells, likewise technology, can make the vacume visible for us and interact with it, put energy in it, or get some out

All that this article has shown is that matter can be created from enough energy. In other words, they have created the 'star trek replicator' in it's most basic form.

Awesome.

Instead of more or less correct speculations, why not read the original paper here: http://arxiv.org/...09.0703.
The authors explain why they shoot a laser beam in the opposite direction of the electron beam, and also give a short review of the particle pair creation processes involved.

The link does not work. Another one please, thanks.

Instead of more or less correct speculations, why not read the original paper here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0703." title="http://http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0703." rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://arxiv.org/...09.0703.
The authors explain why they shoot a laser beam in the opposite direction of the electron beam, and also give a short review of the particle pair creation processes involved.

The link does not work. Another one please, thanks.

There's just an extra period ... the error page even offers to redirect you to http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0703 .

Question: this is not the TV show: if you're unable to find original source of information yourself, then you're not motivated in it enough, anyway.

All that this article has shown is that matter can be created from enough energy..

The experiment with vortex pair formation in fluids demonstrates, the energy itself is not enough for particle pair formation: the inertia of environment is always included.

http://lh3.ggpht....gfsd.jpg

what would be interesting, if they replaced the opposing electron beam with their heavy brothers, muons, that is 200 times the inertia, that would seriously make waves in the sea

Question: this is not the TV show: if you're unable to find original source of information yourself, then you're not motivated in it enough, anyway.

All that this article has shown is that matter can be created from enough energy..

The experiment with vortex pair formation in fluids demonstrates, the energy itself is not enough for particle pair formation: the inertia of environment is always included.

http://lh3.ggpht....gfsd.jpg

Exactly, they particle pairs are not created from nothing. They are created from energy, the laser light pulse.

Last year a huge amount of antimatter was prepared with laser pulses shinning into electrons inside of target atoms. I'm just wondering, why just this experiment hasn't been considered a "theoretical physics breakthrough".

http://www.physor...767.html

Actually this experiment is quite equivalent to the above described - Livermore researchers just didn't use electrons encircling the collider, but the atom nuclei.

The question I have been asking for decades is does anti-matter have negative mass. Anyone got any pointers on this.

Concept was already designed and published 2 or 3 years ago ?

http://www.coloss...age.net/

The question I have been asking for decades is does anti-matter have negative mass. Anyone got any pointers on this.

No, there is no such thing as negative mass, just like there are no negative dimensions, time, momentum, energy, weight and probably a few more things.

@googleplex: supposing inertial and gravitational mass are equivalent, the concept of negative mass leads to some interesting paradoxes. Consider a positive and negative mass, the gravitational force (using newton's Gmm/r^2) will be negative. Then using Newton's F=ma, the positively massed particle will be repelled, and the negatively massed particle will be attracted. They'll both accelerate together forever in one direction. weird stuff. (if you're doing this at home pay close attention to the vector direction in the definition of these forces)

The question I have been asking for decades is does anti-matter have negative mass.

No, there is no such thing as negative mass, just like there are no negative dimensions, time, momentum, energy, weight and probably a few more things.

@googleplex
The energy released in matter-antimatter annihilation is equivalent to the mass of both particles combined, so antimatter must have positive mass.

@Question
It's a question of defintions. If we define gravitational potential as zero at infinity, then gravitational field energy is negative, which is equivalent to a corresponding quantity of negative mass. Also, the region of suppressed vacuum expectation energy between two uncharged conductive plates possesses an energy density less than the surrounding space, which is equivalent to a region of negative mass. In fact, any bound system weighs less than the sum of its unbound components, so all forms of binding energy are equivalent to a quantity of negative mass.

MaxwellsDemon: You seem to be saying that a zero gravitation potential is a negative, isn't a zero a zero neither positive or negative? And also you are equating lower energy levels as a negative, they are not, they are still in a positive energy level.

s does anti-matter have negative mass.

In my opinion dark matter is formed with antimatter preferably and it cumulates in areas with negative space-time curvature around massive bodies. This applies to the most lightweight particles only - particles heavier then the CMB photons (6.34x10-4 eV) have positive mass, so that mass difference of neutrinos and antineutrinos cannot be larger, then some 0.1% of neutrino rest mass...

@Question
If you set the gravitational potential energy to zero at infinity, as is customary, then the energy of the gravitational field becomes increasingly negative closer to the body. This is why the equation for gravitational potential energy has a negative sign:

U = -Gmm/r

The second section of this hyperphysics page gets into this a bit: http://hyperphysi...pot.html

But this negative sign applies to any bound condition. The system of the Earth and the Moon possesses less mass than the sum of the two if they were unbound, a magnet and a bar of iron lose mass when they come together, and a proton and a neutron have less mass together as a deuteron, than they have when they're independent of one another.

So while it's true that there doesn't appear to be "exotic matter," the binding energy component of a system is a form of negative mass/energy/inertia.

@shavera
It sounds like you've read up on Robert Forward's work on negative mass propulsion, which was inspired by Hermann Bondi's investigations into negative mass solutions to General Relativity. This single fascinating line of inquiry has yielded:

- a theoretical framework for the "Alcubierre drive" spacetime propulsion system (where a spacecraft doesn't move through space, but rather it remains 'at rest' while spacetime itself carries it along akin to a conveyor belt)

- a theoretical model for unlimited acceleration without the expenditure of energy (!)

- a sound mathematical basis for contra-gravitational effects (call it "antigravity," if you prefer)

- a theoretical solution to closed timelike curves (which permit backwards travel through time)

Basically, if you want to turn any of the best science fiction ideas into a reality, negative mass is the key component to making it happen.

"The theory of the electron is based on the fact that it will be an electron forever"? I thought the logic that motivated QED was the fact that particle numbers weren't fixed, and things could appear and disappear conditions were right.

In that sense, particle accelerators create something out of nothing all the time - they transfer enough energy to the virtual pairs in the vacuum to make them real.

I must be missing what's new here

Are you violating the 1st law of thermodynamics when you harvest solar energy? No, but from my perspective here on earth you buy the panel and get energy from pretty much nothing. The sun is out every single day, so the fuel is unlimited. This could prove to be the same with the zero point field, although, I think nicholas tesla already gave us what we needed by inventing the tesla coil and with the advances that gave us harp.

We can use harp, to cause a high intensity bolt of energy to come down from the ionosphere to power a tesla coil in reverse -- the circuit backwards would produce ac, if only it could tolerate the intensity of the energy harvested from the earth's ionosphere. plenty of juice there.

@bobathon, he is referring to the fact that for quite some time the electron was considered an elementary particle, though through QED do we realize that electrons are made up of quarks and gluons. There is a plane of existence permeating through us with which limitless energy is available. All sorts of things happen there that we are just never aware of, this appears to be the beginnings of a means to tap into that portion of reality apart from our own.

@stealthc: in NO way does QED suggest electrons are made of quarks and gluons. Leptons have no known underlying structure, and certainly not quark/gluon matter.
@bobathon: to an extent, yes electrons remain electrons, unless they meet a positron and decay to some photons.

@stealthc I don't think you'll find gluons in QED, no matter what plane of existence you're on

@shavera yes... or unless you subject the electron to a big enough field to knock an electron/positron pair out of it (as they have in this paper), in which case one particle becomes three, with no change of lepton number.

But that was true in 1940s QED, so I'm not clear what's new here.

>>>At the heart of this work is the idea that a vacuum is not exactly nothing.

If it is not nothing, then it is pretty much means that it is a medium for EM waves. Otherwise - how can a wave movement of *something* happen without some sort of a medium? What causes that *something* to vibrate in a wave pattern as it travels? It just doesn't make any sense if it's nothing.

@EvgenijM

Yeah it does. Cause it's fields vibrating. Fields can exist in vacuum too...

That doesn't explain anything. Field is pretty much anything that is naturally described by mathematical vector fields. A whirlpool of water is a good example of how a field forms and works inside a medium - it is very similar to magnetic fields that forms around a wire with electricity passing through it. But how can you explain internal workings of field without a medium? Question remains the same.

@EvgenijM The not-nothing that's in the vacuum is also fields. It's a consequence of quantum field theory. So if you don't like classical fields, you won't like these either!

The fact is that if you start from quantum field theory, you can explain EM waves, vacuum fluctuations, matter, your whirlpool of water, your wire, everything. If you try to do it the other way around - to explain fields in terms of matter and mediums and everyday objects - you're not going to get very far.

Psychologically it makes sense to want things explained in terms of what we already know. But physically, the stuff we already know is vast complex structures of much simpler stuff. So we got to work backwards.

The fact that QFT works so well the other way around is what makes it so compelling.

Let's derail the conversation slightly to consider its application in the realm of fantasy.

Based on the information presented in this article, it seems to me that The Nothing (from The Neverending Story) was actually an antimatter cloud that flowed over the land of Fantasia and destroyed the matter.

Yep, leave it to Science to spoil the wonder of such things better left unexplained...

While in perhaps the purest sense this doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics because you are converting "vaccuum" to "matter/anti-matter" and then energy, it does, however, potentially give rise to theoretically, arbitrarily "infinite" energy, since your "fuel" is "nothing" itself. Provided my scenario above is one day possible.

Perhaps our inter-stellar space ship need not carry "fuel" with it at all. Perhaps the matter and anti-matter can be extracted from "nothing".

Certainly seems safer than trying to store thousands of tons of anti-hydrogen in a magnetic field for years or decades on end...

Eh?? Pal, they still need energy to create the matter. How do you think they will accelerate the particles to relativistic speeds (they need a particle accelerator). How do you think they create an intense laser pulse?? The quantity of matter+antimatter will probably be smaller (and create less energy) than the energy needed to create this matter+antimatter.

"The first step in understanding this new
cosmology is to recognize that space is not empty.
Both science and Scripture strongly imply
that space is a solid material that we cannot see
or feel, though quantum field theory suggests it
is extremely dense(1). We move freely through it
and it moves freely through us(4)."

See

http://www.icr.or...1011.pdf

Vardiman and Humphreys, pg. 12

There is no nothing and there never was a nothing.

A fotòn is a wave, not a mote.

There are no black holes: http://physicswor...ent8733.

"The first step in understanding this new
cosmology is to recognize that space is not empty.
Both science and Scripture strongly imply
that space is a solid material that we cannot see
or feel, though quantum field theory suggests it
is extremely dense(1). We move freely through it
and it moves freely through us(4)."

See

http://www.icr.or...1011.pdf

Vardiman and Humphreys, pg. 12

Nothing scientific says there's anything solid or thick up there, retard. Scripture said the firmament was to hold up the clouds, stars, and rain, until gates could open up to dump weather and other meteors. It also says Earth is flat and heaven is a sea: http://google.com...n". The worse chapter with the maniest mistakes is -ijjob 38.

As for ZPE, the energhy or density is virtval up to Planck scale; it's a mathematical model of what /could/ be there, not what is there. The energhy still goes as background temperature and field.

The whole of ICR's propaganda is to take a few scientific and scriptural facts or models, misunderstand their meaning or application (in other words, context), and then pad out their essay with 20 times original conjecture which has nothing to do with theories or passages. (This is what ministers or preachers do.) These are ignorant of "the deep" (t·hom

(This comment board is very buggy and sucky.)

(t·hom

(This comment board is very buggy and sucky.)

(t·hom: tiàmàt: t·jàmàt = she-sea) to mean the sea below; rather they say it means the heavens or outer space. In the later profètic and apocryfæc books, a few men get taken upwards into the seven heavens, and it doesn't take long: /Death, ecstasy, and other worldly journeys/: "The Seven Heavens in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses", http://google.com...pg=PA59. The univers back then was very small, and writers so ignorant. As heaven was always upwards, and not in another dimension as this ecseghèt writes, the heavens could not be flat as a scroll. The rollingup was after the whirling paths of heavenly bodies.

Mutants (such as these fat-headed hicktarded cretins) are proof against any plan, purpose or intelligent design of life, as are these mistakes: http://google.com...-design. Their stuff is always at least 10y old and long-refuted; handwaving and question-begging is the whole of their essays.

A flood (not even a fictional great worldwide one at the same time) cannot make fossils. Fossils take at least tens of thousands of years in a calm, slow trickly setting.

Cladoghenetic events (for mammals: variation, ~5,000s years; speciation, ~50,000s years; generation, ~500,000s years; familiation, ~5,000,000s years; so on) happen regularly (most often at Milancovich and Wilson supercycles) when worldwide catastrofes wipe out nearly all in a group; the few survivors may inbreed in demepools when their ghenetic mutations are then off equilibrium; new features then show up. Look at the gheologhical time chart; each new length was after a great dieoff or huntoff. Ediacaran-Cambrian was after ghamma ray burst; Permian-Triassic was after Panghæa stifled convection and Earth became a dry greenhouse; Cretaceose-Tertiary was after mètèor strike and vulcanism. The newest speciies were about 20,000 years ago after the last glaciation: http://google.com...ciation.

The people, who are able to discuss the Milancovich cycles in thread dedicated to antimatter are apparently of incoherent religious thinking and it has no meaning to consider them seriously.

This comment board is very buggy and sucky.

Just keep in mind that this board does not understand unicode. Print out a page with the well known 7-bit ASCII characters and stick to them.

naturally you have to put in a lot a energy in a small space to be able to make splashes in the quantum sea, so in that sense we could say that you have to put in X energy to catalyse Y mass from the vacume, its indeed creating something from "nothing", but NOT for free, until they can induce some selfsustaining sort of cascade or fissionable reaction in the vacume fluid, lets just hope it doesn't runaway like the big nang

instead of 2 mile electron beam linac, it would be interesting and cheaper to research if such effects can be obtained by running a huge current through a (allmost) perfectly flat rectanngle of graphene (with its quantum Hall and mass electron flow properties), and shine a laserbeam overhead with a small vacume seperating the two, maybe even a glasfiber layer could be sprayed upon the graphene as a waveguide, so that you could shine/channel cheaper broader spreading halogen or lead-array light over the graphene as well and etch in some small vacume grooves in the optical waveguide layer that have optimized geometries for popping up particle pairs as well as splitting/diverting them away upon creation, to prevent them recombining, so that you could harvest the antimatter particles

i would think you need some grooves in the optical waveguide as well as in the graphene strokes that run in different directions in relation to overlying waveguide, that depending on particle charge matter and antimatter particle are offered different escape routes, also the huge advances in tabletop sized lasers with ultrashort, but powerfull pulsed bursts would make a antimatter creator on a chip within the realms of the imaginable and (perhaps) obtainable.

Funny how articles about quantum vacuums and antimatter seem to end up getting taken over by nutters :)

and anti-nutters as well its like pair creation

The people, who are able to discuss the Milancovich cycles in thread dedicated to antimatter are apparently of incoherent religious thinking and it has no meaning to consider them seriously.

nothing to do with religiose thinking

Just keep in mind that this board does not understand unicode. Print out a page with the well known 7-bit ASCII characters and stick to them.

print?! I need accent marks for vowels outside standard Latin: Hellènic, Cyrillic, Qhibiriqht. These are not for pitch but for shift.

I need accent marks for vowels outside standard Latin: Hellènic, Cyrillic,

Would be nice, but you are out of luck here.

Qhibiriqht

What's that?

These are not for pitch but for shift.

Doesn't matter; it's not possible to embed non-Latin characters here.

No, it wouldn't be http://wiktionary...ki/nice. Learn English.

I already did embed non-Latin here, Vulgar or Romance notwithstanding.

Question: Could this proposed experiment and the theoretical spontanious generation of matter near the event horizon of a dark hole simply be converting non-baryonic matter to baryonic via the injected energy?

No, there is no such thing as negative mass, just like there are no negative dimensions, time, momentum, energy, weight and probably a few more things.

ACtually, that isn't correct. Spatial dimensions are both positive and negative, which is pretty obvious as when dealing with gravity we often have positive and "negative" acceleration, etc.

We don't normally measure values such as distance or speed as "negative" with an actual instrument, because they are symetric. However, there is certainly a positive and negative range of motion with respect to any given axis in spatial dimensions.

The quantity of matter+antimatter will probably be smaller (and create less energy) than the energy needed to create this matter+antimatter.

You don't necessarily know that just yet.

The article seems to imply that the particles come from the vacuum itself, and that the energy of the laser simply facilitates this.

could rip apart a vacuum into its fundamental matter and antimatter components

This says that the thing being ripped is the vacuum itself. It isn't saying that the particles are coming from "normal" energy or particles.

So it isn't a matter of converting the laser's energy into particles, but rather the laser's energy facilitates the decoupling of these already existing particles.

I need accent marks for vowels outside standard Latin: Hellènic, Cyrillic,

Would be nice, but you are out of luck here.

No, it wouldn't be http://wiktionary...iki/nice

Your link explains:

(easy to like: thing): charming, delightful, lovely, pleasant

That's what I was trying to express.

Learn English.

That's what I'm trying to. Therefore, I appreciate that you are trying to help me. Unfortunately, your hint was not helpful.

I already did embed non-Latin here, Vulgar or Romance notwithstanding.

That's interesting. Which non-Latin characters did you manage to embed here?

Another useful tip: HTML links are spoiled when immediately followed by a period.

If this is so, then maybe it is an insight into what has in the past been described as zero-potential energy. Essentially, there is more to nothing than meets the eye.

If this is so, then maybe it is an insight into what has in the past been described as zero-potential energy. Essentially, there is more to nothing than meets the eye.

This is what drives me nuts about these discussions. This is NOT directed at you specifically Possibilus.

There is nothing more to nothing than meets the eye...if there were it wouldn't be nothing. Vacuum isn't nothing, even if there were no seething sea of virtual particles or zero point field. EVEN IF this were the case it's still something, it's empty space, it's volume and THAT is something.

Nothing is N O T H I N G. Quit trying to hijack the concept

/rant

the vowels with accent marks
hint: kined
period -> dot

empty (not moot) -> bare
http://google.com...te"

Does this article imply an upper limit for electric fields? I assume that to conserve energy, that when the virtual particles transform into real particles, that they get their energy from the electric field. So shouldn't that drop the strength of this electric field? Wouldn't this imply that anytime the electric field got too strong, that the excess energy would be removed as per this article? So wouldn't that constitute an upper limit on how strong an electric field could be?

the vowels with accent marks

Yes, thank you, that's exciting: "ò", "à", "è", "æ".

period -> dot

OALD: "period -> punctuation: (NAmE) = FULL STOP"

empty (not moot) -> bare

But in physics: "empty space", not "bare space".

"ghenetic", "ghamma", "gheologhical" - that's a nice way to indicate the Greek letter gamma (katharevousa: gama). But why "catastrofes" and not "katastrophes"? Why "Panghæa" and not "Pangaia"? "mètèor" and not "meteor"?

Why "maniest mistakes"?

and screw the arseholes who gave me 1 *

Thanks for the invitation. K'ego s'agapo, dyslexia.

What's OALD?

Empty means not moot. Look up their ætiomologhies.

I said, it's not a nescient way; you want to be a nescientist? "katastrophes" would be ki'alfa'taý'sigma'taý'hro'omicron'pi'hèta'epsilon'sigma. "Pangaia" would be Pi'alfa'ný'ghamma'cappa'alfa/iota'alfa. "meteor" would be "mý'epsilon'taý'epsilon'omicron'hro. Aspirate stops ouht be spelt geminately: ph -> pp.

Maniest to be comparative of many; more comparative of much.

ætýmologhies I mean.

http://google.com...+-autumn

Maniest to be superlative of many; most superlative of much.

Since my question drew no response before i'll ask in a different way: Can can nonbaryonic matter be changed to baryonic matter with the infusion of energy and/or electrons? Is this what can theoretically happen near pulsars or neutron stars, or in this proposed experiment?

Could this something from "nothing" actually be building upon a substrate of nonbaryonic matter?

Sounds like a line into the creation of a interstellar space drive. Use this mechanism to convert space into matter/antimatter pairs. This 'compresses' space to some extent. Do this in front of our spacecraft. Then take the antimatter pairs and transport them to the rear of the spacecraft and turn them loose to recombine to form a new unit of 'vacuum' (appear to annihilate). So now we have appeared to have wiped a vacuum element front of the spacecraft and recombined it in the rear. The craft has been 'shifted' forward ever so slightly as a unit of space has been decomposed in front of the 'surfing craft' and reconstituted in the back. Shifted without really moving, I might add. Lets make a really BIG one of these machines, or aggregate many of them together. Einstein, you been had, and we are prisoners of our local spacetime no longer!

The idea is, assuming you can make a generator capable of getting a net gain from the particles, you extract anti-matter from the "vacuum" to annihilate with matter as a means both of primary ship power and propulsion.

If you want to know where the propellant comes from, it comes from the same place. You might use half the particles as "fuel" and the other half as "propellant".

what i wonder is, if you have a hollow glass cube with a vacume inside and you somehow manage to induce pair creation inside the cube and these pairs recombine and leave the cubee as photonic energy through the transparant walls, will you effectively evaporate the false vacume into a real vacume ?? will outside cassimir forces or the uncurling/shrinkage of space inside make the cube implode even when placed in the not so vacume after all vacume of outer space??? Now if the vacume was really evaporated and the cube was very strong to resist implosion, incoming photons would maybe not even be able to propegate through the cube as there is no longer an äetheric medium inside?

so, what is your take on the "substance"of the vacume? it lends itselve to be explained in terms of waves, virtual particles and even as pure geometries in quantum gravity with energy and mass and space explained as the surface tension of branes. All these models face the same oppertunities and problems as people drawing flat maps of our earth, some projections work better for longitudes, others for lattitudes, but at the expense of some countries in distorted size near the poles etc...what is you r projection of the vacume?

large := broad
large -> great

Husky: http://google.com...er+emmer

The behavior of vacuum can be modeled with density fluctuations of dense gas, the most dense gas in terrestrial conditions is supercritical fluid. During condensation of such fluid the density fluctuations have character of nested foam - it's just the moment, where energy is spreading through such system in slowest speed possible. So we can approximate the behavior of vacuum with foam and the massive particles are density fluctuations of such foam, similar to blobs. They're propagating through vacuum in standing waves like solitons or wave packets, which are spreading along surface gradients of that foam.

The important point here is, every bubble in foam has a pair of surface gradients, which are determining inner and outer surface of foam. The particles formed with standing waves of the inner surface of foam bubbles correspond the particles of matter, the standing waves spreading around outer surfaces with slightly positive curvature are particles of antimatter.

Under normal conditions the vacuum foam appears like sparse foam with very flat walls, so that there is very subtle difference between behavior of particles, spreading / forming inner and outer walls of vacuum foam, because these walls are nearly parallel.

But the high energy state of vacuum foam corresponds the situation, which occurs when we shake soap foam inside of vessel - the bubbles with flat walls will change into tiny spherical bubbles. Under such circumstances the difference in surface curvature inside and outside of bubbles increases and particles and antiparticles would differ significantly. In this way, the rest mass difference in mass of heavy particles and antiparticles will be small, but it will increase for neutrinos and antineutrinos. From the above model follows, it would differ with mass of CMB photons (6.34x10-4 eV), i.e. ~ 0,1% - 1% of the rest mass of neutrinos (neutrinos should be slightly heavier, then the antineutrinos).

fast -> swift
dense -> thick
http://google.com...te"
https://groups.go...e04ab370
http://google.com...sh"

Husky:

I was wondering something similar earlier when I was considering the possibility that you might get a net gain, which would be used for a propulsion.

It occurred to me that if you had a ship pass along a linear trajectory, then the "vacuum" would have a "tear" through it along that line where it has been converted to particles and then annihilated.

Would "space-time" somehow automatically "patch" such holes?

The headline reminds me of the scientist called Andrew Crosse who made an android out of water or some kind of solution energized by electricity.

http://en.wikiped...w_Crosse

Some people say his experiments inspired Mary Shelly to write Frankenstein.

http://www.answer...w-crosse

Insects came from the solution as if Andrew Crosse had mysteriously created life from nothing.

Years later scientists learned there was more to it than that.

Andrew Crosse's tombstone refers to him as an electrician, not a scientist.

Articles like this really grab my interests, I would really like to know what anyone thinks of the idea that everything could be composed of pairs of oppositely charged particles of some sort, whose interactions define everything else about the particle group's observable properties. What equations or theories would help disprove that everything is built on pairs of charges interacting on the very smallest level making up everything from this quantum scale

What equations or theories would help disprove that everything is built on pairs of charges interacting on the very smallest level making up everything from this quantum scale

That's basically electromagnetism.

That's basically electromagnetism.

"Basically" yes, but we know about many types of charge, not just electromagnetic ones. For me such idea follows naturally from the assumption, space-time is inhomogeneous and only space-time curvature (gravity lens) is, what what we can observe from it as a matter. No special assumption about composition of vacuum is required, after then.

Maybe if it turns out that the volume space made up by a vacume would shrink if its converted to photons, then maybe, dark energy, the expansion of space could be explained by reverse mechanisms, tired light/red shift, photons losing energy condensing into the vacume as additional spacevolume or, if tou don't like tired light, that if through continious interactions in the vacume itselve larger bubbles decay into smaller bubbles, their charge and possibly pauli exlusion principle against occupying the same space would make them repel and blow up that foam like whipcream with a much larger volume than in the cannister?

Ultimately in that hypothecially scenario, there would be a heat-death not only for the visible universe, but for the vacume as well, after wich gravity could possible take over again

the expansion of space could be explained by reverse mechanisms, tired light/red shift

This is nothing new, even E. Hubble explained it so in 1929.

"it could be possible to create something out of nothing"

Nothing except...

"an ultra-high-intensity laser beam and a two-mile-long particle accelerator"

Scientists are philosophical retards...no really they are...

im not sure you understand science, it's usually thought of as something the gets better to be very basic.
one piece of knowledge plus another equals more than their individual values.

well there is still this debate whether light redhifts due to the expansion of space, or space expands due to the absorbsion of light

maybe matter+antimatter is the higgs field

It's most definitely a form of converting energy to another form - but it does open possibilities for space travel - as fuel can be generated on the fly from electricity (which can be gained from solar panels, etc.)

It's most definitely a form of converting energy to another form - but it does open possibilities for space travel - as fuel can be generated on the fly from electricity (which can be gained from solar panels, etc.)

Assuming we can get out more than we put in.

Of course if it's efficient you don't need to make your antimatter fuel on the fly anymore.

It's most definitely a form of converting energy to another form - but it does open possibilities for space travel - as fuel can be generated on the fly from electricity (which can be gained from solar panels, etc.)

Solar panels would require that we stay near a star. As usual, I'm looking for a bit more.

there is no such thing called void
( measurment problems calls undetectable energy entities void)
energy is the sole constituent of the universe
energy entities are endless dimentional ( it creats dimentions or engulfs them ) on bases of surrounding feilds

ordinary matter is a condensation of energy
( proportionality related to geometry and distribution defines at what level of condensation it should proceed no more

( this is how atoms first formed)
the dark matter is a near dimentionless enegy ( collapsed enery0
which tends to exist for that particular moment ( time scale is not yet defined)that unpresentedly condense b starts restoring dimentions by sucking everything inn ( black holes)
this is the process of expantion ( restoring energy's dimentions)
it's a contineous loop of ulternating expantion /condensation process on going scince the creator brot it to existance big bang thing is just a part of the story

I know pair creation has been known for a long time, but would this give any insight into CP violation? If an experiment could be run to create matter/anti-matter pairs, we could see if there was a tendency to actually create fewer anti-particles. The evidence shows that there is a preferential destruction of anti-matter (with the prevalence of matter in the Universe) but is there a preferential creation mechanism? has that been studied? It's been years since I did any High Energy Physics.

If an experiment could be run to create matter/anti-matter pairs, we could see if there was a tendency to actually create fewer anti-particles. The evidence shows that there is a preferential destruction of anti-matter (with the prevalence of matter in the Universe) but is there a preferential creation mechanism? has that been studied?

Good question. I think that the default mode of mathematics is to produce ordered results, while the source of the universe's energy is random. Whatever we work the model around mathematically (when correct), seems to happen. This leads me to believe that all order follows some rules, but the universe background does not. Dumping energy (order) into the high density randomness, we see things related to the instruments we use, usually electromagnetic in nature. All things we know grow or evolve out of the concept that if a thing is useful to itself, it can extract something from that background or cause other patterns to emerge from randomness.

If an experiment could be run to create matter/anti-matter pairs, we could see if there was a tendency to actually create fewer anti-particles. The evidence shows that there is a preferential destruction of anti-matter (with the prevalence of matter in the Universe) but is there a preferential creation mechanism? has that been studied?

Good question. I think that the default mode of mathematics is to produce ordered results, while the source of the universe's energy is random. Whatever we work the model around mathematically (when correct), seems to happen. This leads me to believe that all order follows some rules, but the universe background does not. Dumping energy (order) into the high density randomness, we see things related to the instruments we use, usually electromagnetic in nature. All things we know grow or evolve out of the concept that if a thing is useful to itself, it can extract something from that background or cause other patterns to emerge from randomness.

I know pair creation has been known for a long time, but would this give any insight into CP violation? If an experiment could be run to create matter/anti-matter pairs, we could see if there was a tendency to actually create fewer anti-particles

You cannot create a fewer amount of antiparticles due the laws of conservation of leptonic and baryonic numbers. But inside of material apparature the antiparticles tend to decay faster into smaller particles and as such escape from it.

http://www.scienc...2139.htm