Usually in laser cooling the laser is simply bouncing off a mirror back into the laser cavity because otherwise you have a laser beam going off into space until it runs into something to absorb it which is hopefully not human flesh.
Netherless as I said if you want to one side the laser your photon absorbed the energy from your molecule and heads off into space.
It matters not that photon gained energy and has slightly more mass and it is still definitely in the universe so the molecule lost some mass the photon gained some mass the mass of the universe stayed constant.
You can't dance around it Paul nothing changes for the universe heat exchange does not change the mass of the universe because the energy stays in the universe.
Beginning to see how hard it is to change the mass of the universe, to do it I think you would have to prove that energy mass equivalence is wrong and that is a tough technical hurdle I can take you thru it if you want.
Last edited by Orac; 08/22/12 03:02 AM.
