Can we change space into matter?

I've set up a thread to explore the option of changing the energy found in space into matter. As we know space is made up of semi objects floating around indefinitely like photons, neutrinos, and all the other particles which together form the basic structure of matter.

Does anything really need to change in order for space to become matter or is it just a factor of all particles converging at a singular point?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

You cannot change space into matter. Photons of sufficent energy can convert into matter. The matter is made up of a particle and an anti-particle which will quickly annihilate and then we have energy again, but 2 lower energy photons.

If you want matter just look around you, why make matter?:shrug:

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I am not sure this is entirely correct. In Einstein's 1905 paper, DOES THE INERTIA OF A BODY DEPEND UPON ITS ENERGY-CONTENT?, he suggests that photons, though they have no rest mass, can transmit mass between atoms, in the form of energy.

Keeping that in mind, the following paper, Observation of the Dynamical Casimir Effect in a Superconducting Circuit, seems to confirm that the Dynamical Casimir Effect, DCE, can create real photons, from the virtual particles of the vacuum energy of otherwise empty space.

Those particles could then alter the total mass of any atom that absorbs them. This would seem to be a situation, where the kinetic energy of an object moving relativistically and interacting with the vacuum energy of space, creates real photons from the the vacuum energy.., and thus from space, without altering the mass state of the object itself. The virtual to real photon generation being dependent on kinetic energy only.

As a disclaimer, I have not seen any of the peer review of the last paper referenced above though it was submitted to a peer reviewed journal. I just don't have access to the journal.

And this is speculative and remains theoretical. Still it does raise questions as to the fundamental relationship between mass and space, assuming that whatever the substance of space associated with vacuum energy is, can be considered a fundamental chacteristic of space itself.

Edit: I should have also qualified this in that it is only discussing a mass equivalent to the change in an electron's energy state. I was not attempting to suggest that complex matter, as in atoms, or even protons could be created from space in this way. Though, I still maintain that it does raise issues relative to the fundamental relationship between mass, matter and space.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I'd think it's particles that coalesce due to many factors like the coalecence of nebulas from the remenants of different types of particles from exploding suns over millions of years. Space is made up of particles so its never really without them.

 

It's been done with photons:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-scientists-vacuum.html

And it can be done with other particles, given the appropriate amount of energy.

 

That's not exactly changing space into matter, that's just pulling photons out of the theoretically infinite quantum vacuum. In General Relativity you can do it from the Einstein Field Equation:

\(R_{\mu\nu}-\frac{1}{2}Rg_{\mu\nu}=8\pi GT_{\mu\nu}\)

The right-hand side is a tensor whose components are essentially proportional to the matter/energy density at a given point in spacetime, and the left-hand side is related to the curvature. Produce the appropriate curvature and the mass/energy must theoretically appear as a consequence (in conventional thinking, it works the other way around). Good luck blending that picture with quantum theory, though.

 

This is the same as the second paper I linked in my earlier post. I know it was submitted to Nature in Sept. 2011, but I have heard nothing about any peer review. The link I gave was to an arxiv version of the paper. I am not able to provide a credible review myself as there are aspects that are a bit out of my pay grade.

That said if or when it is confirmed, there may be implications applicable to inertia also.

 

If you add the DCE paper to some of the other attempts to explain inertia as a quantum phenomena, there is a logically implied relationship between the quantum vacuum or vacuum energy and space itself. From that prespective there may be some framework emerge which can bridge the current gap between GR and QM. Likely there would be some adjustments required in how we project both into experience, but that has been something comming for a while now.

We continue to accumulate observations that don't quite fit the theory, be that GM or QM, until a shift in how we approach the issue leads to a new and (hopefully) better model.

Even just creating a photon from a kinetic interaction with vacuum energy, is a big deal. As I mentioned in a previous post, it is the emmission and absorbtion of photons, that lead Einstein to, E = mc^2, mass transferred from one atom to another by a massless photon.

 

Can you change ashes and heat into a log? How about a log into ashes and heat? Mass evolves to space, not the other way around.

 

Query: Can energy change into matter???

 

You might have forgotten about the Hawking process.
Because there is a lot of energy in space near the surface of a black hole, the vacuum can spontaneously produce Hawking radiation as particles or antiparticles of matter.

Also, if we produce high enough electric fields in a vacuum, electrons appear. So it seems that if there is enough energy in a region of space it starts to convert itself into matter.

We can produce high energy electric fields fairly easily, but curving space like a black hole does would be a bit harder to do.

 

I actually had that one in mind. I just wanted someone else to mention it for confirmation. It become very easy to find a like mind with a loaded question.

I guess the hard part about us turning space into matter is finding something small but with really large gravity. Could an object like that even exist? It all seems so impossible

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

So I can do what the universe does. Turn energy into matter.

Plus I need a new car and I want the next one to just appear out of thin air.

 

It seems likely that space-time and mass-energy would be unified in the center of a black hole after the gravitational collapse of a star. This was possibly a pre-big bang condition of the universe :idea::shrug:

 

Did you read that on the back of a can of tuna, or what?

 

Fudge Muffin, this is a home work problem, yes? And have you figured out what you needed?

I ask because there is another approach, of logic which may not always apply in similar questions, that involves factors of the four numbers involved. The solution is fairly easy to get at, but where the mathematical approaches being offered so far, have a wider application, there is a unique situation involving the numbers 5, 6, 7 & 11 in this particular case.

I hesitate to go further not knowing the context of the question and class you are involved in.

 

energy FOUND IN SPACE into matter

nothing new here

space is not " made " of anything at all , space is ROOM for anything to exist

all these things you talk of is matter IN space

yes

space

if we have space empty of energy and matter , what then happens ?

so

what has this got to do with the transformation of space into matter ?

 

Space is already matter. We just don't consider it to be mass.

Or the matter known as space. There is air in my room.

You add a black hole which swirls "empty" space into our basic components.

If I was somewhere in a galaxy I would probably look to the center and the extremities for answers.

 

Space is not matter, space is volume. A cylinder of 4.12" x 3.75" has a volume of 49.99 cubic inches. It says nothing as to the mass of the air/fuel mixture contained in the cylinder. The cylinder could have been filled by atmospheric pressure or it could have been filled by a supercharger. Get the idea? Don't you understand the principles of a 4 stroke cycle internal combustion engine?

 

Wrong! Volume measures the dimensions of space. You have replaced the physical with a measurement. Saying something that has been here longer than you isn't even real?

Why do you say it is not matter? There is no such thing as "empty space". Subatomic particles fill anything "empty". Is that not matter?

Even worse you can not explain where these subatomic particles found in space formed into the first atoms when you fail to believe space is full of particles with the ability to become mass.

I don't have to know how a car works. All I have to do is have the key and be able to turn it.