Transformation of light into matter. Free Technical Library News

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Turning light into matter

14.10.2021

In the American government laboratory located on Long Island, scientists create matter from light alone with the help of a sophisticated particle accelerator. This phenomenon on our planet occurs for the first time.

This experimental breakthrough confirmed the predictions made by influential physicists almost a century ago, and also shed new light on the mysterious processes that occur on both quantum and cosmic scales.

The transformation of photons, massless particles of light, into electrons, elementary particles of matter, was carried out by a team of researchers at the RHIC relativistic heavy ion collider. The theoretical prerequisites for this work appeared at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, but in order to test them experimentally, it was necessary to seriously equip the experimental equipment at RHIC - the solenoid tracker-detector (STAR).

“This is an interesting effect, since the photon has no charge, so from a classical point of view, the magnetic field should not affect it,” the scientists explained. “Therefore, this clearly proves the fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics. A photon can experience constant fluctuations, turning into an electron-positron pair , which in turn interacts with the magnetic field, and that's what we measured."

The new measurements could help astrophysicists and cosmologists model the creation of electron-positron pairs from the light surrounding the universe's most energetic objects and events, from supernovae to black holes. The STAR collaboration plans to continue experimenting by attempting to capture the first two-dimensional images of the atomic nucleus in unprecedented detail.

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alcohol from the air 19.10.2016

US physicists have created special "nano-needles" made of graphene and copper that use electrical energy to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into ethanol molecules - ordinary alcohol.

In recent years, scientists have been actively trying to find a way to turn atmospheric CO2 into biofuels and other useful substances. For example, in July of this year, physicists from Chicago presented an unusual solar cell made of nanomaterials that directly uses light energy to split carbon dioxide molecules and produce carbon monoxide and hydrogen, from which methane, ethanol and other biofuels can be obtained.

Rondinone and his colleagues took this process to its logical conclusion, trying to find new, more efficient ways to split CO2 into carbon monoxide and oxygen without generating other reaction by-products that are useless or even interfere with the production of biofuels from carbon dioxide.
As the main material for this catalyst, the scientists chose copper, whose electrochemical properties are ideal for reducing CO2 to carbon monoxide and other types of molecules.

The problem is that copper nanoparticles and plates convert CO2 not into one substance, but into several tens of molecules at once, whose presence and concentration depend on the voltage that is passed through the catalyst. This makes the industrial use of such CO2 splitters virtually impossible.

Physicists from Oak Ridge solved this problem with the help of another promising nanomaterial - graphene. Crumpled sheets of graphene into a kind of "accordions", scientists seeded their folds with copper nanoparticles, which led to the fact that CO2 molecules split in strictly designated places - at the tops of graphene "nano-needles".

This allowed American researchers the flexibility to control what happens during this splitting, and make CO2 turn almost always into ordinary ethyl alcohol - on average, about 60% of carbon dioxide molecules turn into ethanol.

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