Naked Science Forum

On the Lighter Side => New Theories => Topic started by: andy054 on 25/10/2009 15:49:37

Title: Particle Accelerators
Post by: andy054 on 25/10/2009 15:49:37
Particle Accelerators

Surely we are looking at things from the wrong side,

If mass and energy are basically the same thing, should we not be building a photon containment chamber, and changing energy into mass?

To see how it all works?
Title: Particle Accelerators
Post by: Vern on 25/10/2009 20:46:28
In effect that is what happens with electron-positron colliders. The stuff that shows up downstream of the collisions include the basic building blocks of matter. The collisions occur in vacuum; a whole zoo of particles show up; these include hadrons. Hadrons are protons and neutrons.

At the first instant everything turns into pure energy; then particles of matter appear. The particles of matter are mostly unstable and quickly decay into radiation and smaller particles. QM theorists try and catalogue the zoo of particles and make some sense of them. Photon theorists see them simply as almost stable frequencies that momentarily form a pattern of entrapment. The unstable particles need not have anything at all to do with real matter.
Title: Particle Accelerators
Post by: LeeE on 01/11/2009 12:02:06
Mass i.e. matter, and energy aren't the same thing, just as men and women are both human but fundamentally different.

However, one way of looking at Einstein's E = mc2 is to view it as the ratio between energy and matter, and this gives a clue as to why matter collisions are used instead of photon containment chambers: energy is much more 'dilute' when compared with matter, by the ratio of c2 and you'd have to generate and contain correspondingly high energy photons to do anything worthwhile.

Furthermore, using matter particles in an accelerator allows us to start with an already high energy density that we can then increase further by accelerating them to relativistic speeds, which we couldn't do with photons because they are already traveling at 'c'.
Title: Particle Accelerators
Post by: Vern on 01/11/2009 14:54:53
Quote from: LeeE
Mass i.e. matter, and energy aren't the same thing, just as men and women are both human but fundamentally different.
It depends upon whether you accept magical transformations or not. I would rather guess that the energy is simply contained in the mass and is let loose when the mass comes untangled. But I agree that hadron collisions produce much more local energy and some interesting things should happen if they ever get the thing going. [:)]
Title: Particle Accelerators
Post by: LeeE on 01/11/2009 18:52:24
It depends upon whether you accept magical transformations or not.

What's the point of discussing anything if you're going to start invoking magic?

Quote
I would rather guess that the energy is...

If 'rather' is a valid option then you can wish for anything.

Sorry for being so harsh, but belief and wishful thinking is unverifiable, no matter how elegant a solution it may provide.

You may have some very good ideas, and they may even be the truth, but you need to prove them to raise them above belief and wishful thinking.
Title: Particle Accelerators
Post by: Mr. Scientist on 01/11/2009 18:58:02
Mass i.e. matter, and energy aren't the same thing, just as men and women are both human but fundamentally different.

However, one way of looking at Einstein's E = mc2 is to view it as the ratio between energy and matter, and this gives a clue as to why matter collisions are used instead of photon containment chambers: energy is much more 'dilute' when compared with matter, by the ratio of c2 and you'd have to generate and contain correspondingly high energy photons to do anything worthwhile.

Furthermore, using matter particles in an accelerator allows us to start with an already high energy density that we can then increase further by accelerating them to relativistic speeds, which we couldn't do with photons because they are already traveling at 'c'.

No, they really are just different forms of the same thing. That's what E=Mc^2 means.
Title: Particle Accelerators
Post by: Vern on 01/11/2009 19:17:45
Quote from: LeeE
What's the point of discussing anything if you're going to start invoking magic?
I was trying to evoke a thought; maybe the theoretical transformations are not natural, is the thought I meant to evoke.[:)]
Title: Particle Accelerators
Post by: andy054 on 03/11/2009 00:08:54
I was getting my information from one of the Manhattan project's website's, it states, 

"It became clear from the Curies' work that there was a tremendous amount of energy locked up in radioactive decay—far more than chemistry could account for. The source of this energy, as given by Albert Einstein's famous E = mc2 formula, was that some of the mass in the nucleus was being converted to energy, and that a very small amount of mass could produce an enormous amount of energy."

So, I just thought that it could be converted back, if trapped and pressurized.
Title: Particle Accelerators
Post by: Vern on 03/11/2009 12:18:40
You're right; energy can be converted to mass; however, the rate of exchange is so great that there would not be much point in it. [:)] We have done enough of it to know that it is possible. The value of it is only in the discovery that experimental results confirm theory.