Transforming light into solid matter

originally posted by: stormcell
Zap a couple of gamma rays in the same point in space-time continuum and you'll get yourself an electron and positron. A proton is a thousand times as massive as an electron, so you would need thousands of gamma rays to make up a proton. That would be easily done using a gamma ray laser. Then you would get hydrogen gas from those particles. Apply a strong magnetic field as well, and you would have ion propulsion as well.

That isnt quite how it works, the interactions in quantum physics are not as simply additive as that in this case. You do get Gamma-Gamma interactions, but the point here is that you cannot simply say work out the energy of two gammas that you add to make an electron and simply add more.

Energy is quantized it isn't as simple as say putting in 1GeV worth of photons, and getting a 0.99 GeV particle and getting 0.001 GeV worth of photons to conserve energy.


Also Gamma Ray lasers are not easy at all. Induced gamma emission is not easy and as far as i am aware no device has been produced outside of a mix of proof of principle experiments and theory.

originally posted by: PansophicalSynthesis
What I was imagining as of now, and it is not limited to this process, is harnessing and storing an immense amount of energy through absorbing light. A greater amount of energy can be harnessed through magnifying and focusing a beam of light into a smaller area. Obviously this increases the heat energy. Every held a magnifying glass over an object? Magnifies, intensifies and focuses the light into a concentrated beam. This equates to more energy.

This energy can be transformed into electricity. This follows similar steps of modern day solar power panels, though they are very inefficient and lack the entire idea of magnification and focus for increased energy reception and thus production/output.

So what you do when you focus something with optics is increase the energy density or intensity, you do not actually increase the total energy. You get out what you put in (actually probably less due to transmission loss). Now that is just me being pedantic, but the second part i have quoted it is important for.

Ever heard of a solar furnace? or a solar power tower? These do exactly what you describe, so the idea is not lacking at all. The other part is that traditional solar panels are designed as they are for cost effectiveness and also robustness. make them too hot and they reduce in efficiency. It is not as easy as just making a big mirror or magnifying glass and pointing it at a smaller sized solar panel... You would likely do nothing more than reduce the efficiency and operating life of the panel.

a reply to: DaRAGE

SOLID MATTER, DaRAGE. SOLID MATTER.

There are 4 different forms of KNOWN matter - liquid, solid, plasma, gas/vapor.

Transforming light into electrons is only mutating them into the PLASMA form of matter, not the SOLID form.

a reply to: ErosA433

What I am talking about is increasing the total energy. So we are talking about two different concepts. If you set up an array of mirrors and magnifying optics in a way that diverts light to a centralized point, it captures more solar-light than just laying a panel out in the sun to capture whatever may happen to land on the surface volume.

As I mentioned, it is similar to solar panel, but should not be exact. I'm more interested in looking for a material better equipped at managing, conducting and harnessing immense intensities and "densities" of solar-light. So, a material with a high melting point, or some kind of heat-cancellation/nullification effect. Whatever works.

a reply to: PansophicalSynthesis

Sure, i understand that, but the point remains similar, There are plants that do exactly what you describe already. capable of producing extremely intense heat. Now You can use that in a traditional plant to make superheated steam and drive a turbine to provide your power, but as you said, thats not quite what you are trying to do.

a reply to: ErosA433

Whatever works. I'm just afraid that the immense heat generated by the magnification and centralization of the solar-energy would evaporate the steam. Of course, one way to reduce the heat would be to deconcentrate the beam and thus increase the surface volume on which it lands. The thing is, the light can be magnified multiple times, and be directed in with mirrors from many different locations and altitudes, and as long as their alignments are all precise, then one huge beam of light can be magnified exponentially by multitudes through optics. IMMENSE HEAT.

As interesting and fun s this is, I do not surmise that it is a power source that will be difficult to find. I need to figure out how to manipulate the electron shell of an atom, even if only in theory to begin with.

If we are working with an existing material and we are attempting to mutate it, then we would have to rearrange its entire atomic structure. Electrons would have to be ionized, removed, and/or added.

Protons and neutrons would also have to be accounted for, as with all other atomic constituents. I think applying the correct EM frequency, perhaps coupled with a microwave frequency, tuned to the proper resonance, aimed directly at an object, could begin to destabilize parts of the atom. This, I think, would be a good start.

a reply to: PansophicalSynthesis

Well, I always kind of thought that the most primitive form of life, proteins and protoplasm were already the most direct transformation of light energy into physical matter, hence the logical assumption that light is life.

a reply to: PansophicalSynthesis I know not physics but i have a feeling that sound would be involved.

originally posted by: ManFromEurope
a reply to: PansophicalSynthesis

Just a quick one: You would need a megasize photovoltaic system to create matter in more than nanoscopic volumes.

You know it, we know it, it is the most famous formula of the world and it says all we need to know about transmutatic light to matter and vice versa: E=m*c².
The crux lies in the c².. That is a very large number. Equal to a very large sum of energy if the mass is larger than some atoms..

What people fail to realize is that if it works forwards it must also work backwards. As in, it isn't turning light into solid objects that we want to do, because as you said yourself, it would take an insurmountable amount of light to equal anything of worth.

What we want to do, is turn garbage matter, like actual garbage) into light. Using the same principal in reverse, you should get an insurmountable amount of light from the smallest of objects. Light that could be harnessed for all sorts of things, like energy. Imagine devices that could turn matter into light, put one of those bad boys on top of every smoke stack in the world and you have a MASSIVE reduction in pollution on a global scale.

Just an example of why it would be more beneficial to turn matter into light, and not light into matter.

a reply to: Vortiki

Ah ha. The political spin to things. This is better than that, etc. I don't harbor those opinions, nor do I wish to argue for or against them.

Perhaps your opinion belongs in a different post. Why would you come to mine, constructed about turning light into solid matter, and diss it by claiming that's not what we want to do. That's exactly what I want to do.

Imagine a world where factories powered by solar-energy can create whatever we need through mutating that energy into solid matter. We'd no longer be fighting over resources. Anything and everything we'd ever want, need and desire could be available to us at nearly the snap of a finger. This could also be commercialized into smaller, personal products. Like personal solar-powered 3d printers that need only the light of the sun and the techno-mechanical medium to produce whatever you want.

We already recycle trash, and we can receive light from garbage through incinerating it. We already do these things.

originally posted by: PansophicalSynthesis

Imagine a world where factories powered by solar-energy can create whatever we need through mutating that energy into solid matter. We'd no longer be fighting over resources. Anything and everything we'd ever want, need and desire could be available to us at nearly the snap of a finger.

Says who? There's always a cost. Solar energy means you have to pay back the investors in the large capital expenditure. You'll have to pay the investors in the matter transmuter, which surely would be expensive.

Do you have to pay the owners of a gasoline refinery or pharmaceutical plant, magic chemical synthesizers that they are?
You betcha!

Do you think that rich people would rather buy up the ability and rights to manufacture items for others? Would they give them away or sell them at the highest price that they can bear? (Cf chemical plants).

This idea that ability to craft things technologically means that they're free and will make a beautiful equal utopia, ignores the entirety of history of the industrial revolution and what it did to concentration of wealth and power.

People are as ambitious as they ever were---technological changes give them the ability to create wealth and exert power as they ever did.

Wow, my iPad is more powerful than a computer mainframe 40 ears ago! Does this mean I'm a millionaire like those who could afford a mainframe in 1968? Nope. You can still be in a slum, working a lousy job with massive student loans and medical bills, but you commiserate with baleful tweets on your iphone. Yay.

a reply to: PansophicalSynthesis

This type of technology would basically take or absorb as much photon energy around it from the source provided either existing from magnified STAR light to jump start the process so that the rays can now carry form.

Once that process has occurred whatever medium you use (if any and not direct prism like effect from intelligent light particles)

Maybe lab designed or just part of the original light source gaining then carrying a magnetized like mass from the initial exposure to the magnified light source.
You could take a large magnifier and place a sphere or other tetra sphere shape polished and transparent to act like a prism gathering the magnified light.

The added compounds or chems etc. making up its interior/ exterior and assisting in the mass forming process could be figured out and engineered in labs.
Then make a lining and exterior, keeping in mind some of the containment object will be lost then gained by the light entering then being trapped so much that it bonds (you taught it to take form)
How after that would you then take the mass forming light object and modify to your use is more lab related engineering...

Please excuse 1 for not formulating the data in a more formulated way. Interesting idea

NAMASTE*******

1 would imagine a larger or more macro version would allow for all light within it to reflect off the interior enough that the lights starting from a single or more source would bounce and form after so many reflections moving through each other in different directions dividing and bonding eternally in various patterns from the same source...

Double post

a reply to: mbkennel

Ah. Like I said. I'm not a big fan of the political and pessimistically austere economical outlook to this.

My mind is not limited by the submissive thinking of others. If the theory was consummated, then in time enough people would catch on. Funding from the government and the wealthy is not necessary. Small amounts of funding from many individuals that are among the vast majority of the "99%" would be more ideal than slaving oneself to a single investor that donates a large sum. For the people, by the people.