Monday, April 18, 2005
Big Bang Brew
Researchers at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven, NY have distilled a close cousin of quark-qluon plasma, the cosmic cocktail that existed just millionth of a second after the Big Bang.
The Brookhaven brew made by smashing gold nuclei accelerated close to the speed of light could tell us what the universe was like during the big bang, as well as provide experimental verifications of some of the arcane predictions made by string theory, which seeks to unify the laws of relativity and quantum physics. "We know that we've reached the temperature up to 150,000 times hotter than the center of the sun and energy density predicted to be necessary for forming such a plasma," said Sam Aronson, Brookhaven's Associate Laboratory Director for High Energy and Nuclear Physics.
Such temperatures should be hot enough to melt the very vacuum of space like ice and create unattached free quarks and gluons seemingly out of nothing, the researchers said.
Quarks and gluons are the basic building blocks of atomic nuclei. They make protons, neutrons and a host of other more exotic particles.
The Brookhaven brew made by smashing gold nuclei accelerated close to the speed of light could tell us what the universe was like during the big bang, as well as provide experimental verifications of some of the arcane predictions made by string theory, which seeks to unify the laws of relativity and quantum physics. "We know that we've reached the temperature up to 150,000 times hotter than the center of the sun and energy density predicted to be necessary for forming such a plasma," said Sam Aronson, Brookhaven's Associate Laboratory Director for High Energy and Nuclear Physics.
Such temperatures should be hot enough to melt the very vacuum of space like ice and create unattached free quarks and gluons seemingly out of nothing, the researchers said.
Quarks and gluons are the basic building blocks of atomic nuclei. They make protons, neutrons and a host of other more exotic particles.
