Analysis:
As early as ancient times, human beings had a certain understanding of objects and light. With the establishment of modern natural science, objects and light have been systematically studied in physics and chemistry. However, until the19th century, objects and mass, light and energy were artificially confused.
In this period, people think that physical objects are composed of single particles, donors and molecules endowed with a certain mass (atomic weight and molecular weight), and physical objects have discontinuous structures. Discontinuities are not allowed in the physical structure.
Regarding light, there was a struggle between particle theory and wave theory in Newton's time. However, with the discovery of light interference and diffraction, Thomas? Young and Fresnel revived the wave theory of light in the19th century, and since then the wave theory has gained the upper hand in optics. Like motion, light is considered as a form of energy without weight and mass. Light fluctuates and therefore has a continuous structure. In this way, things and light are absolutely opposite in nature and structure, there is no unity between them, and they are not allowed to transform each other at all.
By the end of 19, the one-sided fallacy of the concept of things and light began to be exposed. At the beginning of the new century, the theory of light has made epoch-making progress. Lebedev, a Russian physicist, measured the light pressure through experiments, thus pointing out that light has a property that was previously considered exclusive to physical objects. According to Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light, it can be predicted that light should present pressure. In order to prove this point, lebedev did an experiment: in a dark vacuum, a light movable member with blades was sleeved on a thin shaft, and then a strong beam of light shone on the blades through a small glass window, causing the impeller to rotate. This shows that light does have pressure and light has materiality. Lat calculation shows that that quality of light can be determine very accurately, and the result is the same as that of Einstein's mass-energy relation E=mc2.
Another great progress took place in1900 65438+February 24th. At a meeting of the German Physical Society, Planck read his paper "Theory of Energy Distribution in Normal Spectrum", and introduced the quantum concept into physics for the first time. Planck pointed out that in the case of so-called absolute blackbody radiation, radiation is not continuous as physicists used to think, but discontinuous share (quantum). Then, Einstein put forward the viewpoint of the particle nature of light in his paper "Inspirational Views on the Generation and Transformation of Light" in 1905, and successfully explained the photoelectric effect discovered by Hertz in 1887 with photon theory.
These new discoveries show that light has quality just like real things. Light itself presents an internal contradiction phenomenon: light propagates like a wave, and at this time it shows its own fluctuation, resulting in interference and diffraction of light; When light is emitted and absorbed, these processes are not carried out in a continuous "stream", but in discontinuous shares and quanta. This directly confirms the viewpoint of dialectical materialism that there is no complete separation and absolute boundary in nature, and also clearly shows that the unity of the world really lies in its materiality, because the discovery of the materiality of light directly leads to the unity of light as another physical form of matter and objects.
What needs to be explained here is that the quality of light has no mechanical properties. According to the viewpoint of modern physics, the characteristic of light is that there is no "rest mass", that is, the rest mass of light is equal to zero. The quality of light has electromagnetic characteristics according to its nature. Like the quality of moving electrons, it can be called "moving mass" (to distinguish it from "static mass"), and all inherent qualities of light are "moving mass". This means that light cannot exist in a static state and cannot be imagined as relatively static. If an absolute black body is set on the optical channel to make the light "pause", then the absolute black body will absorb the light, and the light will undergo qualitative change and become another form of moving matter, such as heat. This proves another principle of dialectical materialism: matter only exists in motion, and the world is a moving matter. In this way, at the beginning of the 20th century, the artificial separation between objects and light began to be eliminated. But at this time, people think that there is no fluctuation in the real thing, and light and the real thing still cannot be transformed into each other.
The cognitive process from the initial separation to unification of two physical forms of matter began in the field of optics, and then continued and deepened in other fields of physics, first of all, the field of electronic physics. Because of Planck's quantum theory, the old concept based on the separation of physical objects and light has been seriously shaken. People can't help asking, if light is not only a continuous and fluctuating process, but also a discontinuous and quantum process, shouldn't physical objects be expected to show not only the characteristics of discontinuity and atomicity, but also the characteristics of fluctuation and continuity? This is the idea of French physicist de Broglie. Based on the wave-particle duality and formal analogy of Einstein's light, he put forward the bold assumption that matter waves were only the wave characteristics of light and should also be expressed in physical objects (such as electrons) in his thesis defense on 1924 and 165438125. 1927, Davidson and Gemma confirmed the existence of de Broglie matter wave with nickel single crystal. C.p. Tang Musun (son of electronic discoverer J.J. Tang Musun). Interestingly, Tang Musun Sr won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for proving that electrons are particles, and Tang Musun Jr won the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics for proving that electrons are fluctuating. The phenomenon of electron diffraction is discovered by passing an electron beam through a thin metal foil. 1928, Rab successfully obtained the diffraction pattern of electron waves by using the diffraction grating with stripes.
Therefore, the general conclusion caused by the development of physics makes people admit that the * * * homogeneity of object and light as two basic forms of matter and the * * * homogeneity of its structure should be the basis of material structure. Any substance (whether matter or light) has mass, and quality is the unity of discontinuity and continuity.
This shows that electrons are a complex and contradictory composition, in which the particle nature of electrons is intrinsically related to fluctuations. From the discovery of the contradiction of electrons, it can be concluded that electrons do not revolve around the core like planets, that is, they do not follow some precise and unchanging orbit, but move like clouds (called "electron clouds"), because the fluctuation of electrons excludes the possibility of imagining them only as small balls. The movement process of electrons is much more complicated than that of small balls. It does not obey the laws of general mechanics, but obeys the special laws of material micro-object fluctuation studied by quantum mechanics. Compared with the end of 19, the mechanical picture of the old and still preserved microscopic process has undergone more profound changes, and the idea of mechanical causality has fundamentally collapsed. This is a very important stage to understand the material structure.
From this point of view, the circle of human understanding of objects and light seems to be closed: first, the concept of discontinuity of objects is extended from objects to light (the discovery of light quantum or photon), and then the concept of fluctuation of objects is extended from the theory of light to objects. Moreover, the fluctuation of physical objects and particles are not regarded as two different things, but as an internal unified thing, which exists inseparably in the form of particle fluctuation of these objects.
In 1930s, due to the outstanding discovery in the field of physics, the separation between objects and light was completely eliminated.
It is not difficult to imagine that since we recognize the homogeneity of some basic physical properties (with mass) and their structures (their particles-volatility) in the two forms of matter, it logically leads to the recognition that objects and light are only different forms of the same matter, so they should have the ability to transform each other.
1933 discovered a new elementary particle-antielectrons, that is, electrons with opposite charges, called positrons (e+). Positron and electron (e-) have the same rest mass and the same wave properties, but the charge it carries is positive. Positron is the enantiomer of electron, which has peculiar properties. Positrons and electrons together form a pair of complementary particles, so they are called "pairs" in physics. Iori Yagami? Experiments conducted by physicists such as Curie show that photons (light quantum) (γ) can produce physical electric particle pairs; On the contrary, when the "even" (electrons and positrons) are together, annihilation is transformed into photons (light quanta). Expressed by the formula, it is e+ e-←→γ.
If the fragments of heavy elements are introduced into the Weil Sun Yun cavity, the nucleus of heavy elements will have a lot of positive charges, forming a strong field near it, so photons carrying a lot of energy will tend to this nucleus. Photons of so-called gamma rays radiated by some radioactive substances have such energy. Photons have no charge. However, when this gamma photon falls into a strong nuclear field, the photon undergoes a profound qualitative change in this nuclear field: it forms two electric particles ('even'), which are bifurcated in the photo (two tracks are scattered from one point). In the nuclear field, electrons and positrons formed by light quantum are "even" generations, which are physical objects generated by light and qualitative changes of matter from one physical form to another. The generated electrons continue to exist like all other electrons; When the positron produced with the electron meets another electron on its own path, the two physical electric particles (positron and electron) merge and disappear, and are converted into light and light quantum in turn.
In this way, people's understanding of physical objects and light is artificially separated to achieve their dialectical unity. Now, the two physical forms of matter-object and light (or more broadly, field)-have both particles (discontinuous) and fluctuations (continuous) in structure; It has both mass and energy in nature; Moreover, the two can be transformed into each other under certain conditions. What needs to be pointed out here is that in the mutual transformation between physical objects and light, both quality and energy have neither been eliminated nor created, but have undergone profound qualitative changes. Some people mistakenly believe that when a physical object is transformed into light (such as annihilation), the mass disappears, while energy is produced by the disappearance of mass according to Einstein's equation E=mc2. We should know that the mass at this time still exists in the form of photon mass ("moving mass"), but the equivalent energy has changed from an impassable form to a completely passable form-light energy.