[TerryM (OP)]

Hi, I'm a fresh user here and I was just wondering, what if scientists somehow found a way to actually destroy/create matter? I know this is impossible, matter can neither be destroyed or created (yes that basically means people are space dust). But what if? How would this change the world we live in? What kind of technology would it take to generate this nearly impossible concept? Thanks :]

Terry.




mod edit: Clarified the question

[Mr. Scientist]

It's ok - you're oldschool... but time for some big changes my friend.

Energy and Matter can be created. The first law of conservation is violated by the presence of virtual energy in the vacuum.

[LeeE]

What if we all spontaneously turned into blue polka-dotted rocking horses?  That would change the world too!

Sorry for the sarcasm but there's really no point in spending time thinking about a specific impossibility when there are infinite impossibilities i.e. thinking about creating energy/matter out of nothing is just as (un)reasonable as thinking about what would happen if we all spontaneously turned into those blue polka-dotted rocking horses.

I wouldn't worry too much about Mr Scientist's virtual energy and matter - it still has to be accounted for in the end.

[Madidus_Scientia]

Indeed, the total energy of the system remains the same.

[Mr. Scientist]

Hello? The ZPF anyone?

It's sceintifically-known to violate the order of creation and destruction.

[Mr. Scientist]

Casimir effect maybe?

[JP]

You can violate conservation of energy, but when you average out over any time scale and on any energy scale that's meaningful to humans, you get conservation of energy. 

Even if you don't violate conservation of energy, you can create matter (meaning mass) from energy and energy from mass.  In particle accelerators like the LHC they use the energy of the collisions to create new particles with mass.  The technology needed to create particles from energy and then assemble those particles into useful objects is incredibly far-fetched.  In addition, the amount of energy required would be immense, so no one would want to pay for it.

[Madidus_Scientia]

How do you propose to harvest energy from the casimir effect?

[ScientificBoyZClub]

Well we can't do it in any way.
cos laws of physics don't allow us to do it.
even if you try it will be converted to some other form of energy.
again energy to mass after looong long time.

[Mr. Scientist]

How do you propose to harvest energy from the casimir effect?

We already have harnessed the energy - just nothing on the energy scale used to harness out from what we put in.

[Mr. Scientist]

Well we can't do it in any way.
cos laws of physics don't allow us to do it.
even if you try it will be converted to some other form of energy.
again energy to mass after looong long time.

Maybe... but that's because of current technology, not so much that th laws of physics disobeys this notion. It's still theory.

[Madidus_Scientia]

So basically you may as well be playing with magnets.

[Mr. Scientist]

So basically you may as well be playing with magnets.

We've been playing with magnetics since the babylonian times and most probably before that.

[ScientificBoyZClub]

Well we can't do it in any way.
cos laws of physics don't allow us to do it.
even if you try it will be converted to some other form of energy.
again energy to mass after looong long time.

Maybe... but that's because of current technology, not so much that th laws of physics disobeys this notion. It's still theory.

But it's real.
Mass and energy ... what else ??

[Farsight]

Hi, I'm a fresh user here and I was just wondering, what if scientists somehow found a way to actually destroy/create matter? I know this is impossible, matter can neither be destroyed or created (yes that basically means people are space dust). But what if? How would this change the world we live in? What kind of technology would it take to generate this nearly impossible concept? Thanks

Creating and destroying matter is easy. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilation. It's almost routine, see PET scans at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron_emission_tomography. But you can't create or destroy energy. You can tie it up as matter, and then release it, but you can't actually create it or destroy it.

[Mr. Scientist]

Well we can't do it in any way.
cos laws of physics don't allow us to do it.
even if you try it will be converted to some other form of energy.
again energy to mass after looong long time.

Maybe... but that's because of current technology, not so much that th laws of physics disobeys this notion. It's still theory.

But it's real.
Mass and energy ... what else ??

And extra energy - in fact an infinite amount of the stuff!!!!! So far we have been able to approximate what can be considered an infinite amount of energy from the vacuum, which far outweighs the visible matter and energy in the vacuum by 120 magnitudes of order!! This order is so high, it means that the vacuum is a swirling bubble of energy making new energy system. Energy seems to not just have been created at the big bang.

[Mr. Scientist]

In fact... better put, the big bang is still happening, and more energy is released into the vacuum as it expands.

[Mr. Scientist]

Hi, I'm a fresh user here and I was just wondering, what if scientists somehow found a way to actually destroy/create matter? I know this is impossible, matter can neither be destroyed or created (yes that basically means people are space dust). But what if? How would this change the world we live in? What kind of technology would it take to generate this nearly impossible concept? Thanks

Creating and destroying matter is easy. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilation. It's almost routine, see PET scans at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron_emission_tomography. But you can't create or destroy energy. You can tie it up as matter, and then release it, but you can't actually create it or destroy it.

Classically though, these systems are conserved.