Can photons create matter?

Question

I know questions in this fashion were posted before on Y!Answers but I would like a more detailed explanation. I read that 2 photons can create matter if they have a specific amount of energy.

My question is:

Can we create actual molecules from photons that travel with the speed of light, in other words..is there any possibility that we can send matter just like information? My knowledge of biology and chemistry is quite thin unfortuanetly.

Answer 1

Yes, according to Einstein's famous equation e=mc^2 matter and energy are interchangable, and energy is carried by photons. Photons can, under the right circumstances, create matter.

It is thought that at the very beginning of the universe, there was only energy, but it was so highly compressed into such a small space that some of the energy coalesced into matter - the hydrogen that created the stars and eventually us.

The transporter in Star Trek was supposed to work on this principle, that the body was broken down into energy, sent as a stream of photons, then reassembled somewhere else.

This has lots of problems in practice, not the least of which is the amount of energy you would get by breaking down a human body into energy. If a 64Kg person was converted into energy, you would get 5.76 x 10^18 Joules. That is about 69,000 Hiroshima bombs. Handling that much energy would be tricky, imagine if your transporter beam went off target a little bit - you could wipe out a whole country!

Answer 2

matter like energy can't be created or destroyed.only change form. light photons are often a catalyst for chemical reactions ........tom  

Answer 3

I asked a similar question in the astronomy section some months ago.  I thought that perhaps I had been daydreaming the day that was covered in class.  But the answer seems to be that energy into matter only took place soon after the big bang.  Matter and antimatter seem to have been created from energy in almost equal amounts.  The two forms mutually annihilated each other.  However there was perhaps a thousandth more matter than antimatter.  That is all that exists today.  There is some suggestion that some weirdness occurs in the vacuum, with virtual particles popping in and out of existence.  I don't pretend to understand any of this.  

Answer 4

Yes. Photons can create matter. In the process called pair production, a slightly over 1.1MEV gamma ray (photon) can create two particles; a positron an an electron, each having an equivalent total energy of 0.55MEV. However since the energy is converted to mass the masses created will no longer be moving at the speed of light but at slower velocities.

Creating actual molecules out of photons alone however is a remote possibility because atoms consist of different particles with different characteristics and need not be created by photons alone. Most particles heavier than electrons are made of quarks.