Denise
Moderator
Scientists at Chalmers University of Technology have succeeded in creating light from vacuum.
Counterintuitively, vacuum isn't really empty: it's full of various particles that are continuously popping in and out of existence. Since their existence is so brief, they're usually referred to as virtual particles.
Back in the 1970s, it was predicted that it should be possible to persuade photons to leave their virtual state and become real ones - in other words, measurable light - if they were allowed to bounce off a mirror moving almost as fast as the speed of light.
And now, this phenomenon, known as the dynamical Casimir effect, has been observed for the first time.
Read more...http://www.tgdaily.com/general-scien...there-be-light
Counterintuitively, vacuum isn't really empty: it's full of various particles that are continuously popping in and out of existence. Since their existence is so brief, they're usually referred to as virtual particles.
Back in the 1970s, it was predicted that it should be possible to persuade photons to leave their virtual state and become real ones - in other words, measurable light - if they were allowed to bounce off a mirror moving almost as fast as the speed of light.
And now, this phenomenon, known as the dynamical Casimir effect, has been observed for the first time.
Read more...http://www.tgdaily.com/general-scien...there-be-light