You cannot just convert an electron to energy just like that. That would violate the conservation of spin and the conservation of charge. Also, electrons are affected by the strong and weak interaction, whereas a photon is not. A positron is required for the event to take place.
Energy and mass are different manifestations of the same thing.
norock, that user is most likely speaking of pair production.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html
is it possible to create what we consider matter [things we can see/touch] not at this point in time. the fermilab accellerator [a VERY large one] drains half a city's electric, and still cant produce many particles. however, is it possible to create particles from energy at this time, yes.
The first respondent confirms this.
After doing this, scientists though that it must work the other way around, so they collided two immensely powerful units of pure energy together, and two small particles magically appeared,
ive never heard about this one lol link?
After doing this, scientists though that it must work the other way around, so they collided two immensely powerful units of pure energy together, and two small particles magically appeared, so yes, matter is never created or destroyed, it only changes form... even if that form is energy. We need to come up with a word that describes mass and energy together.
The laws of thermodynamics apply to things on the human scale - on the quantum or universal scales they may not hold.
1 kilowatt-hour (roughly the energy consumed by running a toaster for 1 hour) is equal to 4.0055402e-11 grams of matter.
the hell with the basic laws of thermodynamics. Free energy sources will be reality.
=)
But yeah, what FP said. Take the nucleus of an atom, for example. Say, it has 6 protons and 6 neutrons. The weight of the nucleus itself with the 12 nucleons is less than the weight of each 12 nucleon added together. This is due to the conversion of mass and energy. The binding energy of the nucleus (the energy that holds the nucleons together) is transformed from matter. When split apart, the energy is converted back into mass, thus restoring the "lost weight".