Astronomers detect light being converted into matter
November 29, 2006It’s Einstein’s famous E=mc2 at work–astronomer’s have detected a binary star system where light is being converted back into matter. News like this always makes me nostalgic in a weird way. I guess because at one point in my youth I thought it would be cool to become an astrophysicist, one of these geeks exploring the cosmos for stuff like this.
Like a few weeks ago, when Nova had the special on supermassive black holes was another time when I harkened back wistfully on those youthful dreams of becoming a professional star-gazer. Turns out one of the stars involved in this light-into-matter could be a black hole, though it could also be a slightly less massive neutron star instead.
Stuff like that just seems so fascinating. It’s so completely devoid of any practical benefit and yet it is so exciting to think about what’s going on out there in the cosmos. All those photons smashing into each other and somehow converting back into physical matter. Matter that is of course vaporized instantly by the very high-energy light that created it in the first place.
In the end though I’m okay with my career choice because being an astrophysicist is a tough road. I roomed with a physicist once in college, turns out only a very few make it into the top echelon of research.
My former roommate is now a tech sales guy for a networking company (not Cisco, but a company like Cisco). Pays a lot better than struggling adjunct physics faculty, he’s able to support his kids and a stay-at-home wife.