Lasers could make virtual particles real: "These so-called 'virtual particles' normally annihilate one another too quickly for us to notice them. But physicists predicted in the 1930s that a very strong electric field would transform virtual particles into real ones that we can observe. The field pushes them in opposite directions because they have opposite electric charges, separating them so that they cannot destroy one another.
Lasers are ideally suited to this task because their light boasts strong electric fields. In 1997, physicists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in Menlo Park, California, used laser light to create a few electron-positron pairs. Now, new calculations suggest next-generation lasers will be able to create such pairs by the millions...
In the SLAC experiment, only one electron-positron pair was created at a time. But with more powerful lasers, a chain reaction becomes probable."
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