• Question: If you could shoot into thin air with a laser, and something comes out of it, what would you like it to be? (money, food etc.)

    Asked by lisaspencer to Peta on 22 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Peta Foster

      Peta Foster answered on 22 Nov 2011:


      Well if we focused the laser into air we would rip apart the air atoms (Nitrogen and Oxygen etc) and then accelerate the electrons up to speeds close to the speed of light.

      If we focus into nothing at all… what we call the vacuum…. the Astra Gemini laser i use is so intense that it can actually pull matter out of nowhere… this matter comes out as pairs of an electron and a positron (the anti-electron). We have so far tried this once and we couldn’t overlap our laser beams well enough… we have now got that sorted so we will try again soon… very exciting!!

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