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

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I believe more than a single photon is capable of occupying the same space-time, ergo it cannot be matter.

Good one, darksidZz. But someone already pointed out that photons don't obey the exclusion principle, whereas matter (fermions) does.
 
because photons and matter operate on the same level

i have no idea how to explain this so here goes its like saying that a proton is made up of electrons. protons and electrons are (to the best of my knowledge) are made up of the same building blocks (quarks and nuetrinos what not)
just like initialy matter and photons are made of the same building blocks
the name completely slips me at this moment but hey i gave it a shot

I am a little confused by this entry.

Protons are made of quarks, this is true. But (as far as we know) electrons are made of electrons, not neutrinos.
 
sorry i kind of pulled it out my rear just for kicks
i know little and understand just as much

heres a better one
photons by definition move at the speed of light
matter, (according to einstien) cannot

if matter was made of photons this would not be truth
and light speed travel would be simple
 
heres a better one
photons by definition move at the speed of light
matter, (according to einstien) cannot

if matter was made of photons this would not be truth
and light speed travel would be simple
You need to be very careful about such methods of logic. Gluons move at light speed too, but it's possible to get a collection of gluons to come together and form an object with mass. Gluons, unlike photons, can interact directly with one another. This is why I talked about the su(3) gauge potential of the pure Yang Mils theory being the main area of research for people doing 'pure boson systems'. A ball of gluons struck together is called a glueball. They have a mass of at least 1TeV and might be something the LHC will be able to see for the first time.

The way you describe photons and gluons in a general way is actually very close to one another. It's just that when you construct the 'Maxwell Tensor' (from which you construct your definitions of energy of the bosons) for the gluons there's an interaction term. So if photons could interact they would likely be able to form 'glueballs of light'. Except they don't interact with one another, unless some of them turn into matter first. But if, as some people in this thread are trying to claim, everything is made of photons, they cannot interact because making matter is just making more photons.

And despite what Vern might think, you don't have a working quantum mechanics model if you cannot model interactions. After all, what use is a theory which says "The universe only contains one kind of particle" if it then must say "None of which interact". Yes, it's simpler to have just one field but it's invalidated by the fact things do interact.
 
tiama said:
if matter was made of photons this would not be truth
and light speed travel would be simple
A photon-only universe advocate would remind you that photons that make up particles would need to move in a pattern; see my avatar; like that. The whole thing can't go as fast as the parts that make it up.

Having said that; AlphaNumeric is absolutely correct concerning current theory that you will find in universities. So his are the concepts that can get you good grades :)
 
Appeals to insanity are meant to be in another part of this forum.

Another reason light can't make anything material is that the surfaces of objects - the colours and shapes we see - have atoms that absorb and emit light.

Electrons do this with an infinite number of degrees of freedom. The surfaces we see evolve from the EM field, with infinitely potential 'dimensionality', and we wouldn't see stuff if they didn't.
So matter gives off visible light (in all directions), light doesn't make up matter, it makes up our view of it, eye-wise.
 
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Here is my second entry.

The fact that an electron is not a photon proves that matter can't be made out of photons.

Because you can create an electron and a positron from 2 photons, they must both be made of 1 photon.
Anything that is only made of 1 thing is that very thing. Try to make a wall from one brick, and you end up with a brick.
Nothing in the universe can be made of one thing that is not itself, therefore matter is not made of photons.
 
But what you just described doesn't mean an electron and a positron are photons; photons can become a particle/antiparticle.
it does mean you don't understand the mechanism. Photons aren't bricks. "...photons cannot couple directly to each other, since they carry no charge, but they can interact through higher-order processes. A photon can, within the bounds of the uncertainty principle, fluctuate into a charged fermion-antifermion pair, to either of which the other photon can couple."

Every compact object in space has a radius called a photon sphere, where light paths describe circular orbits.
A photon with a path that takes it inside the sphere ends up trapped by the gravity well, a BH will 'destroy' a photon that passes the event horizon.
Objects within the photon sphere can still radiate light out beyond it though.
 
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Steve100 said:
Because you can create an electron and a positron from 2 photons, they must both be made of 1 photon.
Just exactly what proponents of photon-only universe advocates suggest happens.

Electrons and positions so comprised would take on the additional property of electric charge because of the way the confinement pattern presents the photon's fields toward the outside. See my avatar.

So I don't think this one would rule out the photon-universe concept.
 
Vern said:
I don't think this one would rule out the photon-universe concept.
You must be selectively blind then; because photons only become electrons and positrons at weak interaction scales.
Because of something called the uncertainty principle and momentum.
 
Vkothii said:
Because of something called the uncertainty principle and momentum.
Be careful; we don't want to jam that other nostril :) but I get your drift; I don't see the connection.
 
finally ive got one

a while ago some scientists found out that energy(photons) can be converted to matter, meaning the actual structure of the photon was altered to be something else

and as far as i know anything that has to be converted to be something cant be the structure that makes it up

because that would violate the (dont quote me on this) the law of conservation [energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed only converted or distributed]

so if photons make up matter it would be [creating] more of itself to make matter in the experiments those scientists did on [converting] energy to matter

buahahahaha! as bullet proof as cheese
 
Good shot, tiama; but I don't think it would violate the conservation laws. As long as the curled up photon kept its frequency in its new form, all would be conserved :)
 
sorry to throw this out there but have they discovered a base unit for all existence
or is it still all theory
 
darn i was actually kind of proud of myself there for a second

wait so how would it not though

if you try to convert something into what it already makes up then you would be creating more of what you started with to make the end result

unless your suggesting that the compiling of photons could be mistaken for conversion?
never mind i think i just answered my question
 
tiama said:
sorry to throw this out there but have they discovered a base unit for all existence
or is it still all theory
If you mean a photon-only construct for the universe, it is not even a theory. It is an old hypothesis we are trying to dispose of.

In order for it to be a theory it would need to provide a proof that everything in the universe can be described in terms of Maxwell's partial differential equations. No one has ever done that.

Einstein tried and failed; here's his take on it.

Einstein: (Einstein07.html)
Thus it happened that the goal of erecting a pure electromagnetic
field theory of matter remained unattained for the time being,
although in principle no objection could be raised against the
possibility of reaching such a goal. The thing which deterred
one in any further attempt in this direction was the lack of any
systematic method leading to the solution. What appears certain
to me, however, is that, in the foundations of any consistent
field theory, there shall not be, in addition to the concept
of field, any concept concerning particles. The whole theory must
be based solely on partial differential equations and their
singularity-free solutions.
 
no actually i was talking about a smaller base unit that makes up both photons and matter as a base unit for all existence
 
It's called String Theory. That could possibly solve everything but you really have to be a math whizz to get into it. I don't think it will finally make the cut.
 
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