Posted on 03/07/2021 9:03:48 AM PST by BenLurkin
Physicists studying collisions of gold ions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory, are embarking on a journey through the phases of nuclear matter—the stuff that makes up the nuclei of all the visible matter in our universe. A new analysis of collisions conducted at different energies shows tantalizing signs of a critical point—a change in the way that quarks and gluons, the building blocks of protons and neutrons, transform from one phase to another. The findings, just published by RHIC's STAR Collaboration in the journal Physical Review Letters, will help physicists map out details of these nuclear phase changes to better understand the evolution of the universe and the conditions in the cores of neutron stars.
RHIC's highest collision energies "melt" ordinary nuclear matter (atomic nuclei made of protons and neutrons) to create an exotic phase called a quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Scientists believe the entire universe existed as QGP a fraction of a second after the Big Bang—before it cooled and the quarks bound together (glued by gluons) to form protons, neutrons, and eventually, atomic nuclei. But the tiny drops of QGP created at RHIC measure a mere 10-13 centimeters across (that's 0.0000000000001 cm) and they last for only 10-23 seconds! That makes it incredibly challenging to map out the melting and freezing of the matter that makes up our world.
To track the transitions, STAR physicists took advantage of the incredible versatility of RHIC to collide gold ions (the nuclei of gold atoms) across a wide range of energies.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Now we know why the Fed is afraid of Inflation.
They are breaking matter down into its elemental particles (quarks, gluons, etc.) then watching it reform into matter again, I guess.
But what matter is being disassembled, and what reforms? Gold is mentioned - is it 21st century alchemy, turning lead into gold, or the opposite, or neither?
Everybody knows that!
They figured out how to turn gold into lead EPIC FAIL
Understanding the nature of QGP might give them a better idea of why inflation occurred.
Also, although the microwave background radiation is close to being evenly distributed it is not. This uneven distribution ultimately led to the creation of galaxies and solar systems. However, inflation suggests that the microwave background radiation either should have been perfectly evenly distributed, or at least more evenly distributed than it is. So this is another mystery that understanding the nature of QGP might answer.
yup, hard 2 understand
+1
lol
“ ...the tiny drops of QGP created at RHIC measure a mere 10-13 centimeters across (that’s 0.0000000000001 cm)... “
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