<story><title>Scientists create matter from pure light, proving the Breit-Wheeler effect</title><url>https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=119023</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>smurpy</author><text>It looks like one of the authors is on HN with us.  Can you offer any insight into the cause of the confusing language in the &amp;quot;Science News&amp;quot; piece?  It reads like it was written by a bot not a human.&lt;p&gt;In the sentence &amp;quot;With the theory physicists Gregory Breit and John Wheeler were able to prove that when two high-energy photons collide, a positron and an electron arise, i.e. matter is formed&amp;quot; shouldn&amp;#x27;t the word be &amp;quot;predict&amp;quot; not &amp;quot;prove&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;A more flagrant example of a strange word choice for a human science writer to make is &amp;quot;A direct conversion would require a laser that emits gamma-ray photons in a highly concentrated steel.&amp;quot; Shouldn&amp;#x27;t the word &amp;quot;steel&amp;quot; instead be &amp;quot;beam&amp;quot;?  This seems like the sort of thing an uncomprehending bot might do, conflate those two words.&lt;p&gt;Are my the nits I&amp;#x27;ve picked, above, unfounded? Does the author of the original paper have any information which might suggest that an actual human wrote the &amp;quot;Science News&amp;quot; piece?&lt;p&gt;If not I would suggest that we&amp;#x27;ve got a bot on the loose!  Eeek!&lt;p&gt;Further, I think I&amp;#x27;m seeing rather a lot of &amp;quot;content&amp;quot; floating around recently which smacks of machine origins.&lt;p&gt;Also, to Daniel... Great paper.  Amazing stuff!</text></comment>
<story><title>Scientists create matter from pure light, proving the Breit-Wheeler effect</title><url>https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=119023</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jcims</author><text>I have had this mental question about &amp;#x27;what time is it when photons collide&amp;#x27;.  Given that a photon could have been travelling for a million years colliding with one that has only been travelling for a microsecond, and from the photon perspective there is no passage of time and no distance.&lt;p&gt;I then kept reading things that tell me photons don&amp;#x27;t interact, which saddened me because I like the question.  This now appears to not be the case, is there a specific condition under which photons can interact like this?</text></comment>