What are the practical complications of turning energy into matter?

Question:

Lets just say I had practically inifinte energy. How do I go about turning this into a stream of protons? Dont hold back on the quantum field theory. Smashing existing particles together & filtering out what we want(protons) is not a good enough answer.

Answer:

The first practical complication is that you cannot (as far as we know) create matter without also creating an equal amount of anti matter. Of course the fact that the observable universe is mostly regular matter indicates that there is some lopsidedness to this summitry and so it may be possible to find conditions that at least create slightly more matter then antimatter. Still, this is a problem that you would need to be overcome to get your pure stream of regular matter protons.

Another problem is the fact that to create particles we simply amass a very large amount of energy in a very small space and see what pops out. We have no way to command that only certain particles be created. For example, even if I amass enough energy to allow for the spontaneous creation of a pair of protons (the proton and its anti matter partner) i have no way to know if the protons are what is going to be created, or other particles whose combined mass and energy add up to the mass of the proton pair. We can only predict the frequency that certain particles will be created.

Finally, although the transformation of energy into matter and matter into energy is a common occurrence in nature, and an entire industry (the nuclear power industry) has been made possible by our understanding of the transition we still aren’t anywhere close to having a mass-energy conversion machine.

I can try and explain the conversion machine and our current methods of conversion if you want, but I think its off the topic of your question, and it looks like I’ve mad an ugly wall of text already.

If any of you reading this see something that I’ve got wrong, or want to explain in more detail please do! This is a topic I’ve been curious about for years.

Edit: I saw your post in r/physics. No, we can’t do better then smash particles together and see what comes out. Think of it this way. We don’t create matter, we simply create the conditions that allow matter to be created. The conditions that are needed are a very high concentration of energy, and the only way we have to achieve those conditions are particle collides. Unfortunately if we have enough energy to allow for the creation of a proton, then we have also allowed for the creation of many smaller particles that will need to be filtered out. So I’m sorry if smashing existing particles together & filtering out what we want is not a good enough answer, because right now its the only answer.

On finding that particles were being lost from the system in which they were stored, physicists have hypothesized that the particles may have traveled into a parallel world of mirror particles.  Neutrons May Travel to Mirror Dimensions A magnetic field of particular strength and orientation could cause neutrons to be lost from a system into a parallel world of mirror particles. Italian physicists have hypothesized the existence of parallel matter to explain an experimental anomaly that cannot be interpreted using standard physics. Their findings could shed light on the nature of dark matter, which is believed to make up more than 80 percent of our universe’s mass even though it is completely invisible.
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On finding that particles were being lost from the system in which they were stored, physicists have hypothesized that the particles may have traveled into a parallel world of mirror particles. 

Neutrons May Travel to Mirror Dimensions

A magnetic field of particular strength and orientation could cause neutrons to be lost from a system into a parallel world of mirror particles.

Italian physicists have hypothesized the existence of parallel matter to explain an experimental anomaly that cannot be interpreted using standard physics.

Their findings could shed light on the nature of dark matter, which is believed to make up more than 80 percent of our universe’s mass even though it is completely invisible.

The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky. Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the universe, all apportionments are of necessity artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web.
Michael Talbot, author of “Holographic Universe”  (via lovedrugsetc)

$100K offered for proof that scaled-up quantum computing is impossible

MIT researcher Scott Aaronson has certainly riled the physics community with his offer this past Friday, of $100,000 to anyone who can prove that scaled-up quantum computing is impossible. His original reason for doing so was, as he describes in his blog, due to adding his two cents to an argument between skeptic Gil Kalai and researcher Aram Harrow about assumptions regarding the Quantum Fault-Tolerance Theorem, on another blog, where he argued that refuting the idea of scalable quantum computing would amount to more than just taking apart the QFT Theorem; it would he suggested, mean coming up with a new version of physical reality. Then, because of the response he got from the blog owner, he felt compelled to defend his assertions in a rather bold and some might say, foolhardy way. Thus was born the $100,000 bet, or prize.

tl;dr Quantum Computing is going to happen, and if you think otherwise and can prove it, you’ll get $100,000 from an MIT professor. 

Quantum Cryptography Comes to Smart Phones

A smart phone can do pretty much anything a PC can. But, aside from password protection, phones have very littlesecurity—a real problem with more and more people using phones for online banking and shopping.

But researchers at Los Alamos National Lab hopequantum encryption can help. Quantum encryption typically requires a lot of processing power and covers only short distances. But Los Alamos says it’s developed a minitransmitter that encodes the encryption key on a single photon. They call it the QKarD transmitter, short for Quantum Smart Card. Any change in the photon’s quantum information reveals an attempted hack and cancels the transaction.

Good luck, hackers.

Quantum Entanglement for dummies - Dr.Quantum

How to See Quantum Entanglement Human eyes can detect the spooky phenomenon of quantum entanglement (What the hell is that?) — but only sometimes, a new study on the physics preprint website arXiv.org claims. While eyes can help determine if two individual photons were recently entangled, they can’t tell if the brighter bunch of photons that actually hit the retina are in this bizarre quantum state. “In general you think these quantum phenomena that involve only a few particles, they’re really far removed from us. That is actually not so true anymore,” said physicist Nicolas Brunner of the University of Bristol. “You could really go to an experiment by just having people look at these photons, and from there really actually see entanglement.” In an earlier paper, Brunner and colleagues at the University of Geneva in Switzerland sketched out an experiment in which a human observer could replace a standard quantum detector. This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds, they say, because the eye’s most important job is to be a sensitive photon detector. The researchers would first prepare two entangled photons — photons whose quantum properties are so intimately linked that one always knows what the other is doing. When an aspect of one photon’s quantum state is measured, the other photon changes in response, even when the two photons are separated by large distances. The researchers would send one photon to a standard detector and the other to a human observer in a dark room. The human would see a dim point of light in either the right or left field of view, depending on the photon’s quantum state. If those flashes of light correlate strongly enough with the output of the ordinary photon detector, then the scientists can conclude that the photons are entangled.
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How to See Quantum Entanglement

Human eyes can detect the spooky phenomenon of quantum entanglement (What the hell is that?) — but only sometimes, a new study on the physics preprint website arXiv.org claims. While eyes can help determine if two individual photons were recently entangled, they can’t tell if the brighter bunch of photons that actually hit the retina are in this bizarre quantum state.

“In general you think these quantum phenomena that involve only a few particles, they’re really far removed from us. That is actually not so true anymore,” said physicist Nicolas Brunner of the University of Bristol. “You could really go to an experiment by just having people look at these photons, and from there really actually see entanglement.”

In an earlier paper, Brunner and colleagues at the University of Geneva in Switzerland sketched out an experiment in which a human observer could replace a standard quantum detector. This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds, they say, because the eye’s most important job is to be a sensitive photon detector.

The researchers would first prepare two entangled photons — photons whose quantum properties are so intimately linked that one always knows what the other is doing. When an aspect of one photon’s quantum state is measured, the other photon changes in response, even when the two photons are separated by large distances.

The researchers would send one photon to a standard detector and the other to a human observer in a dark room. The human would see a dim point of light in either the right or left field of view, depending on the photon’s quantum state. If those flashes of light correlate strongly enough with the output of the ordinary photon detector, then the scientists can conclude that the photons are entangled.

Antigravity? What the hell is that? The question of whether normal matter’s shadowy counterpart anti-matter exerts a kind of “anti-gravity” is set to be answered, according to a new report. Normal matter attracts all other matter in the Universe, but it remains unclear if anti-matter attracts or repels it. A team reporting in Physics Review Letters says it has prepared stable pairs of electrons and their anti-matter particles, positrons. A beam of these pairs can be used to finally solve the anti-gravity puzzle. Let’s see how this turns out.
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Antigravity? What the hell is that?

The question of whether normal matter’s shadowy counterpart anti-matter exerts a kind of “anti-gravity” is set to be answered, according to a new report.

Normal matter attracts all other matter in the Universe, but it remains unclear if anti-matter attracts or repels it.

A team reporting in Physics Review Letters says it has prepared stable pairs of electrons and their anti-matter particles, positrons.

A beam of these pairs can be used to finally solve the anti-gravity puzzle.

Let’s see how this turns out.

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