CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Creates Matter From Light

Scientists on an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider see massive W particles emerging from collisions with electromagnetic fields. How can this happen? - The ATLAS detector at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. (Credit: CERN) Note: This article was originally published by Symmetry magazine. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) plays with Albert Einstein's famous equation, E = mc², to transform matter into energy and then back into different forms of matter. But on rare occasions, it can skip the first step and collide pure energy - in the form of electromagnetic waves. Last year, the ATLAS experiment at CERN's LHC  observed two photons , particles of light, ricocheting off one another and producing two new photons. This year, scientists have taken that research a step further and discovered photons merging and transforming into something even more interesting: W bosons, particles that carry the weak force, which governs nuclear decay.