So you're telling me you can finally make my food at the touch of a button?!

wonder how big of a bomb will be threatening the world after this matter i successfully created

Matter and energy are not interchangeable they are the same, this is what Einstein really meant by his famous and oft quoted equation. This experiment is merely an adjustment in our perspective which has to change the observed result. I have no doubt the experiment will work but it will still prove nothing more than math has little to offer us when it comes to knowledge and enlightenment.

Light doesn't turn into matter or vice versa......they are the same

Einstein wasn't saying matter and energy are interchangeable he was saying they are the same, this experiment even if it works which I am fairly certain it will proves nothing but will raise more questions and bring us no closer to explaining the link between matter and energy. It is only our limited conscious human perception that requires them to be interchangeable, the reality is that matter and energy are the same we just aren't able to explain that mathematically......and we never will. My message to all scientists out there and not just physicists is keep doing what you are doing but also expand your thinking way beyond what you are currently focussed on, math provides us with an ability to apply knowledge but knowledge is far more than math can ever explain, realise this and you are on your way to understanding, ignore it and you are no smarter than the 5th grader who will eventually be critiquing your paper less than 100 years from now.

Science is a LIAR... sometimes.

Green Lantern origins.

"...but the potential to shed light on the quantum world matters greatly."

'MATTERS GREATLY'!

God is light and he created all matter. Read your bible, it knew this before science existed.

So, god is energy, that is called Taoism...

I must be missing something.

Electron-Positron pair production from gamma photons is commonplace, in fact it was central to the project I became involved in from my first day at work in 1967, connecting and calibrating a Sodium Iodide scintillation detector configured as a "pair spectrometer". Pair production and annihilation is easily observed with 2.75Mev gamma rays from a Na 24 source. At this energy, positrons are produced about as often as the gamma is completely absorbed by the photoelectric effect. The positron invariably recombines with an electron to annihilate, producing two 511 KeV photons in opposite directions.

The pulse height spectrum from such a detector exhibits three peaks and a continuum, corresponding to whether a gamma ray is a) absorbed entirely in the detector or b) produces a positron that subsequently annihilates with one 511 KeV gamma escaping, or c) ditto with both 511 Kev gammas escaping or d) scatters by the Compton effect to produce a lower energy gamma that escapes the detector. See eg.

http://www.physics.uoguelph...

I must admit I was amazed to be shown such direct evidence of something so esoteric!

OK, I am no native English speaker, but I am baffled at the fact that I didn't understand that much of your posting. Regardless, I consider your contribution as a valuable comment and am sad that it doesn't seem to be possible to highlight it more.

Re: the discussion i just read. I didn't know scientists were so bitchy.

The Forerunners have returned.

What would be the outcome of this experiment without a hollow gold tube? Doesn't matter! :D

didnt jesus do this in that book i read?

I'm disappointed in the hype title and that no one has pointed out that we already do what the title says and have done it for decades. Every time a gamma ray scatters from a nucleus and creates an electron-positron pair the energy of the light is being changed to matter. What the new thing is creating matter from light directly without the assistance of any charge as a catalyst.

I did this yesterday. In my kitchen. With a colander, a pasta machine and a lava lamp. It really works!

But you gotta use a good lava lamp from Spencers Gift or the Sky Mall. You can't use one of those cheap lava lamps from WalMart or Dolllar tree.

What matter would you like to create from light?

What in the heck are you going to do with a bunch of free electrons?

Enslave Them!!! Mooo hooo hahahahah!

You don't want to just leave them on a shelf. They collect dust like glue. But a nice display cabinet would work.

Detect them.

I'm sure we can make everything out of anything, as it's all coming from one common source: energy.

Matter is merely a concept that explains the playing of energy it does, there is no "stuff" in the universe, only energy.

We just have to figure out how..

I think that monoatomic gold is a quite interesting thing to research if you're willing to learn about this. Involves some disregarded alchemy though, but very very interesting stuff, known that it was used by ancient civilizations before us..

Very interesting!

Never mind quantum physics....Next stop, mass produced home entertainment holo-decks.

Speculating out loud here, but it seems like some day in the far future, they could use something like a giant fresnel lens to amplify sunlight in space, and then some means to make the photons coherent, as the energy source for conversion. Conceivably they could make gold. More practically, they could make energy beams, which could be relayed by space dishes, and used to turn turbines on earth, or energize photovoltaic farms. You wouldn't want to fly an airplane through it, though, and it would be a disaster for flocks of migrating birds flying through it.

but seldom understood, equation e=mc2

Hilariously ironic:
In fact 'e' is the symbol for the charge on an electron, E means energy (and a pedant would italicise the whole thing).
Could you fail any harder?

AWW Geeze. Really?! The grammar police are gonna pick on that too? I guess it is a large difference in meaning.

Stop meddling about in other fields and invent cold fusion already! With me everyone: WE WANT COLD FUSION!

I like the pun at the end of the article "but the potential to shed light on the quantum world"

Pokéball!!! :D

I just found out what I want my wedding ring to be made of.

Reality?

So does this mean that "In the beginning..." there was energy which big banged into matter?

No, the big bang states that in the beginning there was nothing. No light, energy, gravity, etc and all of those things just sort of came out of nothing.

But... every light nuclear reaction (merger) is just that. Especially if the energy input is from light. NIF, for example...

Now this is stuff that MATTERS! Hahaha. Im so lame.

if this really work nicely....
a new branch of application would open

Intellectual arrogance is rude, and disheartening. The fact that non scientist are now interested in subjects like this is encouraging. For those who know more, don't blugeon over the head anyone with scientifically incorrect opnions, rather encourage people to ask questions and seek information. Those who know more should have an obligation to teach those who know less if we are to seriously claim that science serves humanity

so...what do we have to do to get a working copy of the freaking picture?

This is not serious. Energy and matter NEVER turn to one another. E=MC2 is not telling this. It tells only that energy and mass are equall, it means only that if mass changes then energy changes, and vice versa.

Ever tried burning coal? Burning coal turns coal (MATTER) into heat and light (Freaking ENERGY)

This would seem to answer the question to; whether or not the big bang was possible, considering that was an implosion of light and energy. Too bad these are "theoretical physicists." So in other words: Fake, Phony, made up, fictional, etc. I love science too, but I also have a common sense feature that little too many people have nowadays! HAHAHA

*face palm*

So relativity, quantum physics, black holes and the big bang are fake?
Whithout theoretical pysicists you had nor even internet to write comments that point to your ignorance

Not the big bang, I watch that all the time.

I'm not sure how you're making the leap from "theoretical" to "fake." Are you suggesting that gravity and relativity are fake, too? They're "just" theories, after all.

Probably doesn't think theories matter but his opinions are golden.

Here's why light matters! And it's no light matter.