Since mass can be converted into energy like nuclear fission etc, how would a someone convert energy into mass? I've always been told that mass is just super cooled or condensed energy (hope thats right). I don't know if you would learn this in university since I'm just entering next year, but if not does anyone know?


~T.Ro

Ro,
No else has tried, so I'l have a go.

The mass to energy route goes down the entropy hill, as do all natural processes, and releases a very large amount of energy.
While it is possible to push it back up, that also requires a LOT of enregy, and thanks to the inherent inefficiency of energy transformation, a whole lot MORE energy. So it will happen rarely and only when special steps are taken to do so.

Try Googling for "mass into energy" to find lots of references.

John

Well I was watching one of the Star Trek spin offs and Cheif Engineer O'Brien was in a shuttle craft. He asks the computer for a cup of coffee and one appears out of thin air. (As opposed to fat air.) The computer then informs him that the shuttle is low on energy and life support is failing. I'm not surprised the shuttle was low on energy. Making that cup of coffee would have required more energy than is released in a hydrogen bomb explosion, if they were using an energy to matter converter.

That energy you're looking for with replicators is stored as mass. The machine just rearranges the particles.

Interesting - so the shuttle takes off with massive blocks of ceramic, water and coffee proteins just sitting around waiting to be rearranged into a cup of coffee? That's cool. Where can I sign up to join Starfleet?

No, too complicated. I think they have something similar to mickal555's hobby

But then again, this is Hollywood, so they could have written in an entire grocery store. I believe TOS they were food dispensers and not replicators.

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Actually, it moves either atoms, or electrons and nucleons, not whole molecules. That's why it can replicate so many different compounds when asked to; it assembles the complex and unique molecules from simpler stock parts. And I don't know about shuttles, but at least the full starships like the Enterprise extract the particles they need from the waste collection system.

AH d'oh that makes perfect sense, I asked my gr 12 chem teacher my question during thermodynamics and she didn't know the answer... hope her pHd wasn't earned in that field *gulp*... haha but thanks for that, makes total sense... arg why didn't that come to my mind

Rororoyourboat;980657 Actually, energy can annihilate with 100% efficiency turning into mass as particle/antiparticle pairs. The intersection of electron positron pairs at LEP produces a transient photon that can produce the particle/antiparticle pairs. The proton/anti-proton collisions at Fermilab can also do this....first photon, then associated production of pairs. Even neutrino/antineutrino annihilations can turn 100% of the energy into mass. The stipulation must be that they are 180 degrees opposed at contact so that momenta are conserved in the pair production.
Now, to build the colliders and reach lots of beam,...that's inefficient as Bremstrahlung losses waste lots of energy....but individual events can be model children of conservation laws' hierarchy. As the minimal mass pair is the e⁺/ e^-, with 511 kev/ c² each, the photon must be 1,022 kev or 1.022 Mev. The problem here is the positron...it isn't going to last when it touches real mass, and you have touched on the real issue in cosmology....no theory can explain the presently observed excess of matter over antimatter. None. An excess of B mesons does not explain an excess of baryons (protons and neutrons ) over anti-baryons (antiprotons and antineutrons), nor does a single event in any run in any experiment ever explain the fact that there are just as many negatively charged electrons as there are positively charged protons to one part in ~ 10⁸⁰...the number of particles in the observable universe.
All of which makes BB theorists edgey, but particle physicists who live with all the conservation laws in every event in every run in every experiment find that result...self consistent. Pete.

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A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov

Delvo,
Even if it were true (it's a story, Delvo, a fiction, an imagined world!) that the Enterprise had a 'molecule assembler' I really can't imagine (!) that they would bother 'assembling' instant coffee. The powder weighs very little and hot water could be available as a by-product of any energy conversion process, even the matter/antimatter that you imagine to power the Enterprise.

In the meetings room at my work, a machine does this at the touch of a button and delivers a steaming cup of something resembling coffee, or tea, or even hot chocolate. I have to agree that as far as I can tell, it might have a 'molecule assembler' on board - sufficiently advanced technology and all that. Though the strange grains of a crumbly brown substance that are often and mysteriously found on the floor around it may indicate that the catering elves are a bit clumsy in tipping the contents of the waste system into the stock parts bin. Actually that idea is quite disgusting.

I do have to touch a button, not speak to the machine, but hey, that's scope for progress!
John

This has been suggested as a way of creating antimatter for use in interstellar spaceships. First you need a lot of energy; you can try collecting sunlight in close solar orbit, as that is energy which is essentially provided for 'free' by our local star. Then you create two beams of photons with the right energy, and arrange a collision at some predetermined place; the resulting matter/antimatter pairs are skimmed off and separated by magnetic field, and the antimatter put into storage.
The problems with this suggestion are many; I would be interested to hear of any particularly important problems, so that some possible solutions could be suggested. But the end result is a process which converts solar energy into antimatter (no doubt very inefficiently) but which might be the best way to manufacture interstellar fuel.

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It think what he's saying is that the replicator breaks down matter into it's basic particles, protons, neutrons, and electrons, before rearranging them back into whatever matter (including coffee, or even gold or diamonds) needs to be made.

But if that's true, why couldn't the replicators simply be used to replicate dilithium crystals? Would have saved Kirk and friends a lot of trouble hunting for it on various planets, and a lot of red-shirted temps would have survived.

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

Because the replicators are powered by dilithium crystals, and in effect you would end up with a perpetual motion machine.
Which would probably not be out of character for ST.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

OK. As an onboard chemist, I want to know what else is in the dilithium. Is it dilithium oxide, dilithium sulfide? Any knucklehead knows that the alkali metals have never been found to bond to each other in anything other than metallic bonds, which may include 10²⁰ or more atoms easily. pete.

__________________
A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov

I could also answer the more recent treknical questions, but I've just received a lecture that doing so must somehow mean that I don't realize that it's fiction...

Basically, we're aware of antimatter - particles with opposite electric charges that when they hit normal charged matter particles, convert to pure energy. Just how far this goes with actual antimatter based atoms, molecules, objects, critters etc. - who knows, we've never seen anything beyond the antimatter particles created in nuclear particle generators (and the ones created naturally in space and on earth due to radiation and cosmic rays etc - that are like electron positron pairs which are just two elementary particles and not atoms or molecules.

Suffice to say that having a few grams of the stuff would be enough to cause an explosion the size of a nuclear bomb blast and that could happen just by coming in contact with normal matter - like the container it's in.

cbacba. That's not true unfortunately...see; http://press.web.cern.ch/press/Press...iHydrogen.html
The atoms of antihydrogen with antiprotons and positrons as particles in it, instead of protons and electrons had exactly the expected properties. There is nothing mysterious or supernatural here.
They have also tested the properties of antiprotons in a Penning trap...nothing mysterious there either. see;
http://www.springerlink.com/content/...81746q8/<br /> Pete.

__________________
A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov

didn't try to imply there's something mysterious, only something that doesn't seem to be common in nature - at least in our neck o the woods. As for hydrogen - whoopi skidoo - it's about 1 step beyond a positron electron 'atom'. That's still a long way from anti sugar, or even anti-h2o.

What might be mysterious is why there doesn't seem to be any anti-galaxies.

[QUOTE=cbacba;981293]didn't try to imply there's something mysterious, only something that doesn't seem to be common in nature - at least in our neck o the woods. As for hydrogen - whoopi skidoo - it's about 1 step beyond a positron electron 'atom'. That's still a long way from anti sugar, or even anti-h2o.

cbacba. Agreed. The presently observed asymmetry in the matter vs antimatter universe...is THE key question in cosmology. Everything else is relatively humdrum. Pete.

__________________
A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov

It does make for a very interesting question and does seem to indicate a predisposition for normal versus anti matter. That atm post thread that popped up a while back concerning the idea that everything in the particle pantheon was a combination of of positrons & electrons was quite a fascinating idea to me. However, even something that wild still doesn't offer any explaination why the preferences turned out in favor of normal matter or why nature would be preferential to one versus the other. The alternative of no preference seems rather disconcerting and would seem to offer measurable data at whatever boundaries exist or random distributions exists for matter/antimatter due to anhilation.

Let's get back down to earth. Energy has been converted into measurable mass in the process of making elements heavier than uranium in such machines as cyclotrons. See the following site:
http://www.webelements.com/
Very accurate values for the atomic weights of all known isotopes of all elements can be found by browsing this site. For example, curium-246 has an atomic weight of 246.06722, while uranium-238 and two helium atoms add up to 246.05599. A typical method of making the heavier element is by bombarding the original nucleus with helium nuclei in a suitable atom smasher. The additional mass of the resultant atom represents the mind-blowing energy that was expended in making this forced fusion happen. It is essentially a reversal of the radioactive decay of these unstable heavy nuclei, in which energy is given off and the total mass of the fragments is less than the starting mass of the original atom.

The same sort of forced fusion is believed to have happened in supernova blasts, and probably is the primary source of all elements heavier than iron.

So - if you shine a light on a piece of lead with a known weight for a long time and re-weigh it, will it be heavier due to the energy that it did not reflect back?

Has this been done in the lab? Any measurable results?

__________________
If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

I don't think so. Even the most energetic chemical reactions involve energy changes roughly a million times smaller than that of the nuclear reactions in my example. In theory the mass should increase according to Einstein's theory if energy is added to a system, but there is not an instrument on the face of the earth that can measure it. Merely heating an object and leaving it otherwise unchanged would be even less effective, even if it excites some electrons in the sample.

I will need some time to find some quantitative hypothetical cases. More later.

Energy to mass...well that is what we have come to be. The big bang, everything was energy at that time, the unified force breaks to separate each other and we are still on the verge of finding the equation.

I can say as simple as it gets, the energy that was created from big bang, some how with mass cooling have re-structured the molecules to become matter....thus have mass. I guess that is how E=mc2 works...

That's a good point you raised - if you heated a room-temp 1kg weight to 300 degrees, would it weigh slightly more? E=MC^2, so the equation must be preserved... ...or should it? Does the equation merely govern the conversion between matter and energy?

If light has momentum, but no mass, and light is considered to be energy, then perhaps adding heat (just a different wavelength of light) to a system may increase it's energy state, but not it's mass.

Let's try another experiment: Photosynthesis. Light falling onto a photosynthetic substance (such as chlorophyll) causes a chemical reaction. Has mass been added? Certainly the chemical result (sugar) has a greater potential energy state (chemically) than the initial ingrediants. But has the mass actually changed?

In the latter case, I believe so, as there's no increase in the temperature (which is energy). In the former case, I do not believe so, as the energy still exists in the form of heat. The only way the hot 1kg weight can cool down is to either radiate the energy away (so the mass remains at 1 kg) or perform some endothermic reaction which utilizes that heat (thus converting the energy to mass).

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

Here are the approximate quantities I promised for some hypothetical examples.

1 gram of matter E = mc^2 = 9x10^13 joules

Suppose we heat a gram of lead about 300C above ambient temperature, close to melting point.
Specific heat of lead about 1/8 joule/gram*deg
Energy increase is thus 300 times that, or about 40 joules.
That is about 1 part in two trillion of the energy equivalent of one gram as above. Assuming Einstein's famous equation means there is some additional mass in the sample as a result, I would conclude that it is not measurable by any instrument of any type. The best I have done with a precision laboratory balance in a college chemistry or physics lab is about one part per million.

For another example, consider the heat of formation of water, involving a high energy chemical reaction. That is -242,000 joules per mole (exothermic), or about -13,000 joules per gram. Crunching the numbers as above makes that energy about 1 part in 6 billion of the total conversion of 1 gram to energy. If we could forcibly dissociate the water in a closed vessel it should gain that minute little bit of mass (the dissociation is endothermic), once again too slight to measure with any balance I ever heard of.

Note that I am not attempting to micro-analyze the mechanisms of absorption or emission of the energy in question. For the hot lead, it does not matter whether the heating is by means of thermal conduction of the absorption of light. I am making what in my opinion is the reasonable assumption that Einstein's equation applies to all forms of energy, not just nuclear reactions. The latter are merely energetic enough to give us measurable mass differences. For ordinary chemical reactions we can treat the classical law of mass conservation as valid for practical purposes.

I found the pertinent numbers by browsing various sites that appeared to be reliable. Other readers of this are more than welcome to check my work. If you disagree with me about the validity of Einstein's equation for heat or chemical energy, fire away. I am reasonable flame resistant.

E = mc^2

If we looked at diiferent quantities would the action of heating the worlds oceans by a half a degree then be enought to be statistically significant. For instance would enough of a temperature increase to the worlds oceans to give the earth enough extra mass to change its orbit or duration of orbit?

Cheers Mike

I think there is a basic misundestanding here.

Energy does not EQUAL mass (times the square of light speed)
That is the result of transforming mass into energy or vice versa and requires sub-atomic processes.
Just adding energy to a system inceases its energy, normally as heat/temperature. It will have no affect on its mass.
Of course, if a mass is heated to a very high temperature, as in a plasma, the distributiion of particle velocities may approach relativastic and so acquire mass. But the temperature at which that can occur is in the region of BILLIONS of degrees centigrade. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_plasma

John

I have been considering this very question lately.

Are photons...the whole range...microwave all the way to Gamma rays, considered baryonic matter?

Is Gamma radiation the same thing as Gamma rays?

But here are the 2 things I'm really getting at. Someone in a black hole thread,
said that all the light/photons that go into a black hole, adds mass to the black hole via E=mc^2. I'm not so sure of that, and here is why...

Has ALL of the light/photons that our sun has showered on the earth for the last 4.5 billion years, added to the mass of the earth, all that time?

Do the 'earth is getting bigger' proponents have a leg to stand on here?

Or is it possible that E=mc^2 does NOT apply to photons, as has been suggested?

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RussT
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Everything is, as it should be, otherwise, it wouldn't be!

Does this have some thing to do with the fact that the universe is expanding. So any gain in mass is lost in the expansion, undetectable as it is.
Would heating the Earths oceans increase the mass there for alter the orbital formula. . . NO! No, and No.