Scientists observed light converted into matter

According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, light can be converted into matter when two light particles collide with intense force.

But scientists have never been able to do this. No one could create the conditions needed to transform light into matter — until now.

Physicists claim to have generated matter from pure light for the first time. This is a significant breakthrough, overcoming a theoretical barrier that seemed impossible only a few decades ago.

Scientists since they couldn’t accelerate light particles, they opted for ions, and used the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to accelerate them at extreme speeds. In two accelerator rings at RHIC, the accelerated gold ions to 99.995% of the speed of light. With 79 protons, a gold ion has a strong positive charge. When a charged heavy ion is accelerated to incredible speeds, a strong magnetic field swirl around it. 

When the ions are moving close to the speed of light, there are a bunch of photons surrounding the gold nucleus, traveling with it like a cloud. 

That magnetic field produces “virtual photons.” So, in a roundabout way, they accelerated light particles by piggybacking them on an ion.

When the team sped the ions in the accelerator rings with significant energy, the ions nearly collided, allowing the photon clouds surrounding them to interact and form an electron-positron pair — essentially, matter.

The results provide clear evidence of direct, one-step creation of matter-antimatter pairs from collisions of light as originally predicted.