How can we convert energy into mass?

Question asked by: genrelbiad

Asked on: 03 Oct 2009

Einstein's E = MC2 taught us that, contra to what may be intuitive, energy and mass are equivalent.

The catch is that a little bit of mass is worth a huge amount of energy - because we are multiplying the square of the speed of light which is of course a huge number.

In turn this implies that we need huge amounts of energy in order to get mass and indeed that is how to do it - if you have a concentrated large amount of energy then you can actually create particles.

For instance, if you had sufficiently concentrated beams of radiation, say from mega powerful lasers, smashing into each other, then you could create small amounts of matter... and indeed this has been done in the lab. Fascinating.
By: knowitall
Replied at: 11 Oct 2009
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