Photon/Photon Collision

[Quartile]

Wikipedia says that the collision of two photons can create mass. This sounds to me like a chemical reaction of sorts..

[Klaynos]

Not a chemical reaction.

 

A "nice" was of thinking about it in words is that we know the universe is full of vacuum fluctuations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy) if two of these particles are hit by a photon of high enough energy (higher than the rest mass energy E=mc²) then the photons will be destroyed and the two virtual particles will become real.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_creation

 

Pairs of photons don't interact strongly at all, so to answer your question more properly can you like to the wp page and section where it said it?

 

It's probably talking about this or something very simlar caused by the interaction.

[Quartile]

should have posted it to begin with thanks

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-photon_physics

[Klaynos]

Yep so basically it's the process I described above happening over a very short time span before recombining, twice and then the particles which are created from that interacting...

[Quartile]

Is there anywhere this process happens naturally? Stars come to mind, but do stars sustain a high enough energy level for this to occur? It seems like its a positive feedback phenomena that yields matter, I think?

Edited August 25, 2008 by Quartile

[Klaynos]

Well it could feasibly happen anywhere, but the probability is very very low, it becomes higher the higher the energy of the photons, the longer their path length and the higher their intensity.

 

I suspect the problem with it occurring in stars is that the path length of photons in stars is VERY short.