If a nuclear reaction converts matter into energy, what converts energy into matter?
In: Physics
Whatever process created those fissile materials. Be it supernovae or neutron star collisions, a huge amount of energy is there, producing elements with core energy higher than iron.
Nuclear reactions do that too. Different nuclei have different amounts of binding energy. For nuclei smaller than ^(56)Fe fusion produces energy and fission absorbs energy, making “more matter”.
For nuclei larger than that, fusion absorbs energy and fission produces it.
Photons can also turn into matter in [pair production](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production).
Just like a nuclear reactor will produce a lot of energy from little matter you need a lot of energy to convert into matter. It is hard to gather enough energy in a small enough place to create some matter. Most of the matter in the universe were created in the big bang where there were lots of energy in a tiny space. Other then that nuclear reactors and stars can create some matter by accident even though the net total matter will be negative. When a star goes supernova there will be espically much energy in the core which will make relatively much new matter.
It is also possible for humans to intentionally create matter in particle accelerators. These particle accelerators are designed to put as much energy as possible in a tiny location which will cause new matter to be formed. But these particle accelerators require lots of power and can only make a few particles at a time.
I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding in this question. When Einstein published E=mc^2, he was saying there is an equivalence relationship between mass and energy, not that you can convert between them. Mass and energy are the same thing.
Edit: That aside, I found articles about physicists creating electrons and positrons from smashing photons together in 2014. Seems a bit strange, but physics frequently is.
Particle accelerators. When you accelerate something by adding energy to it, it gets more massive, then when you have an impact, that energy gets converted into various new particles.
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