Posted on 03/04/2010 11:47:09 AM PST by decimon
A worldwide team of researchers, including 10 from Texas A&M University, have for the first time created a particle that is believed to have been in existence immediately after the creation of the universe – the so-called "Big Bang" – and it could lead to new questions and answers about some of the basic laws of physics because in essence, it creates a new form of matter.
Researchers Carl Gagliardi, Saskia Mioduszewski, Robert Tribble, Matthew Cervantes, Rory Clarke, Martin Codrington, Pibero Djawotho, James Drachenberg, Ahmed Hamed and Liaoyuan Huo, all affiliated with the Texas A&M Cyclotron Institute, along with numerous researchers from universities and labs all over the world, have created the anti-hypertriton – a never-before-seen particle – by colliding gold nuclei at extremely high speeds. Their work is published in the current issue of Science Express.
Using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y., the team used particles of gold and collided them just short of the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). More than 100 million collisions were made to collect the data.
"We know that some new particles of matter were formed immediately after the Big Bang, but they were gone within a millionth of a second or so," explains Gagliardi.
"By accelerating the gold (gold was selected because it is very heavy) at extremely high speeds, we were able to replicate the conditions right after the Big Bang. It's very much like when two cars collide at high speeds – you would have a lot of hot metal.
"At a temperature of about two trillion degrees, which is about 100,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun, we were able to produce a new form of matter."
As this new form of matter evolves, it expands and cools and eventually decays. When it does so, the majority of it converts back into ordinary matter, but a large amount converts into anti-matter instead, Gagliardi points out.
"This enables us to see things we have never seen before," Gagliardi adds.
"We found evidence of particles called anti-lambdas bound within the anti-nuclei. The anti-lambda has a lifetime of less than one-billionth of a second, which on a nuclear time scale, is actually a long amount of time. It gives us a framework to make sort of a 3D periodic table of the elements, from matter to anti-matter. This now gives us a new class of matter to study, one we think should be a mirror image of our world. But a big question is, how accurate is that mirror?"
Gagliardi says it's been known that the Big Bang made equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, but over time, something has tripped the balance for life to exist – there is more matter today than anti-matter.
"So why is this?" he asks.
"We may be able to answer these questions in the future."
Mioduszewski adds, "These new findings give us a large new source of hypernuclei. They provide us with a new way to study the forces that act inside atomic nuclei, and might teach us about the forces that act in the center of the neutron stars.
"This has opened up a very big door for us."
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About research at Texas A&M University: As one of the world's leading research institutions, Texas A&M is in the vanguard in making significant contributions to the storehouse of knowledge, including that of science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M represents an annual investment of more than $582 million, which ranks third nationally for universities without a medical school, and underwrites approximately 3,500 sponsored projects. That research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting in many cases in economic benefits to the state, nation and world.
Contact: Keith Randall, News & Information Services, at (979) 845-4644 or keith-randall@tamu.edu or Carl Gagliardi at (979) 845-1411 or c-gagliardi@tamu.edu
For more news about Texas A&M University, go to http://tamunews.tamu.edu.
Follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/tamutalk.
PING
Matter of fact ping.
“That’s almost as hot as the center of the Earth!” [/Al Gore]
Anti-Matter of Fact Ping
No one could replicate their claim of cold fusion!
More like BANG!!!!
KABOOM!!!!, even.
The more "we" study subatomic physics, the weirder it gets.
Does anyone have any idea where all the material that created the big bang come from?
So a collision takes place and new matter and anti-matter are created. A quick cooling process happens and much of the matter re-coalesces into the previous matter. But some of the new matter and the new anti-matter hang around for a little while before dissipating. But the anti-matter seems to dissipate faster.
Put onto a universal scale, that might explain a few things like entropy and the imbalance of matter versus anti-matter.
No wonder God said that we couldn't understand him, we learn new basic pieces of creation so slowly.
China. Everything comes from China. We don't make anything anymore.
A black hole in the anti-universe?
There’s little real difference between the Big Bang Theory, and Genesis 1:1.
"We know that some new particles of matter were formed immediately after the Big Bang, but they were gone within a millionth of a second or so," explains Gagliardi.
Gagliardi "knows" this? If something is gone within a millionth of a second, billions of years ago, how do they "know"? All of this is speculation and conjecture.
A question I have had regarding the Big Bang, the entire supposition is premised on everything colliding at or near the speed of light. What was prior to the Big Bang? Are these scientists still going over the Universe expanding and contracting? What about the Universe increasing in speed as it separates, as has been currently obsevered?
Dark Matter cannot explain this, nor can Newton.
“At a temperature of about two trillion degrees, which is about 100,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun, we were able to produce a new form of matter.” No wonder the earth is getting warmer. What ever happened to “Matter cannot be created or destroyed.”? How did they find something capable of containing or creating so much heat?
Very true.
One of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen is creationists objecting to the Big Bang theory when it is essentially a rewording of the Bible. In fact, a good many physicists resisted accepting the theory because it implies the universe had a start and therefore possibly a Starter.
A Steady State universe fits a lot better with atheism.
A better question would be where did the laws of quantum mechanics come from.
AlGore sez that beneath the crust the temperature of the Earth is millions of degrees hotter than the surface. Maybe if you go to the center of the Earth it is TRILLIONs of degrees hotter.
Al's so smart!
Did you read his paper and still not understand?
Or are you dismissing the research out of hand?
Two branes flirting with each other?
We've known about the weirdness for about 80 years. We just keep confirming it.
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