Will all matter be converted to photons?

[bcrowell]

Photons are but one of the force carriers, IMO, I don't see why matter would decay to wandering photons.

The only thing I would point out in addition to what Drakkith said in #35 is the following. People who believe, incorrectly, that all matter will be converted to photons seem to believe that the mechanism of conversion is that all matter gets eaten by black holes and recycled via Hawking radiation. Hawking radiation does in principle include all kinds of particles other than photons. However, these other particles have nonvanishing mass $m$, and the Hawking radiation's temperature is normally much less than $mc^2/k$, so the probability of emitting these particles is ordinarily very small. So if you believed, incorrectly, that all matter gets recycled, then it would make sense to believe that almost all of the resulting stuff would be photons.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Great FAQ!