Superpowered Chinese Lasers Could Soon Rip Open Raw Vacuum

[Judi Lynn]

By Rafi Letzter, Staff Writer | January 29, 2018 05:06pm ET

Physicists are getting close to building lasers powerful enough to rip matter out of a vacuum.

According to a report published Jan. 24 in the journal Science, a team of Chinese scientists is getting ready to start construction this year on a 100-petawatt laser in Shanghai known as the Station of Extreme Light, or SEL. That puts them at the front of a wide field of scientists around the world who are working to realize a prediction published in the journal Physical Review Letters in 2010 by a team of American and French physicists that a sufficiently powerful laser could cause electrons to appear out of a vacuum.

It might seem weird to imagine that electrons could appear out of empty space. But it makes a lot more sense in light of a strange claim of quantum electrodynamics: "Empty" space isn't empty at all, but rather is made up of densely packed pairs of matter and antimatter. Those pairs tightly fill up the gaps between everything, quantum electrodynamics states — they just don't interact in any noticeable way with the rest of the universe, because they cancel one another out. [The 18 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics]

So it's easier to consider that the Chinese laser won't so much create matter, as cause it to enter the world humans can perceive. Its powerful pulses of energy will cause electrons to separate from their antimatter twins, positrons, in ways researchers can detect.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/61562-laser-china-rip-vacuum-antimatter.html?utm_source=notification

[C_U_L8R]

1. Sooner or later

Someone's gonna mess with the wrong thing and pffffffffttt, lights out universe.

[longship]

3. Either that, or cause a chronosynclastic infundibulum.

The question is: Do we actually want that?

[whathehell]

6. Muy sentiment exactly..

[Cicada]

2. At long last Science is emerging from China

Previously they didn’t have many world class scientists but now they are funding them. I guess they will basically cause Science world wide to double. What happens if they learn how to block all our methods of nuking them before we learn that trick?

Lasers to zap icbms, cruise missiles and nuke bombers? Will that put the world at risk or make it safer? May you live in interesting times?

[C Moon]

4. China is a cold-hearted evil nation.

[Cicada]

7. If it cures cancer I dont care if our warm-hearted evil nation comes in second

We caused the death of maybe a million Iraqis. Does it really make much difference that we are warm hearted? Has China invaded dozens of countries as we have? They suck but maybe we suck too.

[Binkie The Clown]

5. In case you ever wondered where neutron stars come from...

Possibly the result of other civilizations doing this experiment and going poof.

Fermi's paradox solved.

[JayhawkSD]

8. "...is made up of densely packed pairs of matter and antimatter."

What happened to the theory that if matter and antimatter ever came together it would mutually annihilate in a massive explosion. As I recall one theory was that the "big bang" was just such an explosion.

[Duppers]

9. Update.

Last edited Wed Jan 31, 2018, 07:41 PM - Edit history (1)

This is disconcerting to me. To better understand, I need to consult one of resident physicists about this article. I'll post info when I'm better informed.

Edited to add UPDATE: He said it would be localized, much like the experiments in CERN. Nothing to be concerned about.

[DetlefK]

11. It's not comparable to the Big Bang:

- The energy is astronomically small compared to the Big Bang. When we approach energies where the forces of nature start merging, THAT is when we approach the Big Bang. Slowly.

- The Big Bang was also the creation of time and space. Nothing like that is happening here.

- IIRC if you mix 1 microgramm of matter with 1 microgramm of anti-matter, you get an explosion similar to a nuclear bomb.
1. That's still way, way, way, way, way, way weaker than the Big Bang.
2. In all of the history of research added up we have not produced that much anti-matter.
3. The experiment is happening in a vacuum anyways, so there will be no explosion, just a flash of light.

[DetlefK]

10. Scientifically incorrect.

There are virtual particles in vacuum. The particles of matter and anti-matter are virtual, so they only exist within the limits of the uncertainty-principle: The pair pops out of nothing and after fractions of femtoseconds they again disappear into nothing.

The laser will simply provide enough energy for this pair to materialize as real particles. With the energy of the laser, the vaccum is no longer empty but filled with photons.