FOR the first time since Einstein said that energy and matter are
interchangeable physicists have created particles out of light.
ÒÁÈ˾þÃs from the universities of Stanford, Tennessee, Princeton and
Rochester first used a powerful laser to create an extremely tightly packed beam
of photons. “The density of the photons is a thousand times greater than the
number of electrons per cubic centimetre in lead,” says Kirk McDonald of
Princeton, a member of the team.
They then injected a beam of very high energy electrons from a linear
accelerator into the photon beam, slamming some photons backwards into others.
The collisions created electrons and their antimatter
²õ¾±²ú±ô¾±²Ô²µ²õ—p´Ç²õ¾±³Ù°ù´Ç²Ô²õ.
The experiment is reported in Physical Review Letters(vol 79, p
1626).
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