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Light Alone Can Create Matter and Antimatter
With the RHIC accelerator, the researchers projected two “clouds” of gold ions against each other…
A phenomenon through which matter can be generated directly only with light was demonstrated in an important experiment conducted by a team of scientists who used the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), an accelerator of the Department of Energy. of the United States located at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
What is an RHIC Accelerator?
The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) is a world-class particle accelerator at Brookhaven National Laboratory where physicists are exploring the most fundamental forces and properties of matter and the early universe. With this accelerator, researchers are able to accelerate gold ions to 99.995% of the speed of light. As explained by Zhangbu Xu, researcher of the RHIC, we use two “clouds” of photons that are projected against each other with a level of energy and intensity not sufficient to cause the ions to collide. The ions, in fact, only touch each other so that the photon fields can interact.
