SciContest! Why can't matter be made of photons?

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BenTheMan

Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love
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Ok, this is the first ever SciContest.

The rules: entry is free. Anyone can participate. No trolling unless it's good, and I reserve the right to judge "good" in a completely arbitrary way. Serious entries are welcomed. The best entry will win a USD$25 gift certificate to Amazon.com, courtesy of me. This means you will have to send me some contact details, but it's ok you can trust me. The contest is over when I say it is, but I will give some notice (say...a week?) before I close the nominations.

To prevent overkill, I will accept three entries per person. No sock puppets.

New Rule: If you can poke holes in someone else's reason, then you should! Of course, someone else can poke holes in YOUR reson, as well.

Finally, the winning entry should be scientifically correct, and it should be phrased in such a way that everyone can understand. If you are a scientist, then you should explain things on the level that laypeople can understand. This is not to say that laypeople cannot enter, and (truth be told) my hope is that a layperson actually wins. If you are an amature, try not to confuse me! The judges will be me, and JamesR (even though he has no idea about this) and one other person who's not a moderator, and who will be chosen in a thread in "About the Members".

Ok, here goes. Keep it clean!

Matter cannot be made of photons. Why?
 
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Layman entry: Matter has mass. Photons are massless. Ergo, matter can't be made of photons.
 
because they have no mass?
because they are always travelling at a constant relative speed and so there is no chance of adherence?
have i misunderstood the question?
 
i know you are going to absolutely hate me,but how are we defining matter?
 
Well I don't like the idea of saying photons are simply massless, because they do have an energy, hence a mass equivalence. It's rest mass that physicists are talking about. Anyhow, I know someone's gonna come along with some QFT and kick my answer out into space.
 
Photons are products of excited (heated) atomic matter. The wave frequency (beats or waves per second) of the photons of white light are so high that it can reach 400 to 790,000,000,000,000 waves per second! (Tera-hertz frequency)

With such erratic motions it would be impossible for a photon to become a solid or permanent piece of any molecular or atomic configuration. If in a laboratory, one attempted to forcibly make a photon join in with say a particle of Earth dirt, the photon would just bounce away unable to be joined with the solid matter. It may be the case because the photon cannot be contained in a magnetic field.

Ultimately however, like electricity, we can only know what a photon DOES and not what constructs it, it is I believe, what I'm going to term a "base unit" of the Universe.

:D (I am a "layman"... have I come close on my statements? )
 
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BenTheMan said:
Ok, this is the first ever SciContest.

The rules: entry is free. Anyone can participate. No trolling unless it's good, and I reserve the right to judge "good" in a completely arbitrary way. Serious entries are welcomed. The best entry will win a USD$25 gift certificate to Amazon.com, courtesy of me. This means you will have to send me some contact details, but it's ok you can trust me. The contest is over when I say it is, but I will give some notice (say...a week?) before I close the nominations.

To prevent overkill, I will accept three entries per person. No sock puppets.

New Rule: If you can poke holes in someone else's reason, then you should! Of course, someone else can poke holes in YOUR reson, as well.

Finally, the winning entry should be scientifically correct, and it should be phrased in such a way that everyone can understand. If you are a scientist, then you should explain things on the level that laypeople can understand. This is not to say that laypeople cannot enter, and (truth be told) my hope is that a layperson actually wins. If you are an amature, try not to confuse me! The judges will be me, and JamesR (even though he has no idea about this) and one other person who's not a moderator, and who will be chosen in a thread in "About the Members".

Ok, here goes. Keep it clean!

Matter cannot be made of photons. Why?
Click to expand...

Is this a trick question, because in september 1997, scientists created matter out of clashing photons together.
 
If two particles with the same mass are made of photons, they must be made of the same amount of photons.
This would make the 2 particles have identical properties, and we already know that we can have particles with different properties and the same mass.
Therefore the particles cannot be made of photons.

mass = relativistic mass
 
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A physicist (mad as a hatter)
Once pondered the nature of matter.
He concluded "it's light";
But we know that's not right,
Since the absence of forces
Would take less than two horses
To cause all matter to shatter.
 
QuarkHead said:
A physicist (mad as a hatter)
Once pondered the nature of matter.
He concluded "it's light";
But we know that's not right,
Since the absence of forces
Would take less than two horses
To cause all matter to shatter.
Click to expand...

What a fun poem!
 
In fact, not only have scientists made matter out of photons, but you also know that all matter with rest mass when encountering their antipartner reduces them back into photon energy. The process surely cannot be disputable.
 
Reiku said:
In fact, not only have scientists made matter out of photons, but you also know that all matter with rest mass when encountering their antipartner reduces them back into photon energy. The process surely cannot be disputable.
Click to expand...

Just because something is made out of something, doesn't mean it is made up of it.
 
That can be disputed heavily. If photons, which are nothing but the simplest forms of energy can be made to interact so that their componants flux into a type of specific matter, then it stands to reason that photons can make matter. It has been proven experimentally.
 
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