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Detecting the Traces of Mystery Matter
August 01, 2005Using high-speed collisions between gold atoms, scientists think they have re-created one of the most mysterious forms of matter in the universe - quark-gluon plasma. This form of matter was present during the first microsecond of the Big Bang and may still exist at the cores of dense, distant stars.
UC Davis physics professor Daniel Cebra is one of 543 collaborators on the research. His main role was building the electronic listening devices that collect information about the collisions, a job he compared to "troubleshooting 120,000 stereo systems."
Now, using those detectors, "we look for trends in what happened during the collision to learn what the quark-gluon plasma is like," he said.
"We have been trying to melt neutrons and protons, the building blocks of atomic nuclei, into their constituent quarks and gluons," Cebra said. "We needed a lot of heat, pressure and energy, all localized in a small space."
The scientists produced the right conditions with head-on collisions between the nuclei of gold atoms. The resulting quark-gluon plasma lasted an extremely short time - less than 10-20 seconds, Cebra said. But the collision left tracings that the scientists could measure.
"Our work is like accident reconstruction," Cebra said. "We see fragments coming out of a collision, and we construct that information back to very small points."
Quark-gluon plasma was expected to behave like a gas, but the data shows a more liquid-like substance. The plasma is less compressible than expected, which means that it may be able to support the cores of very dense stars.
"If a neutron star gets large and dense enough, it may go through a quark phase, or it may just collapse into a black hole," Cebra said. "To support a quark star, the quark-gluon plasma would need rigidity. We now expect there to be quark stars, but they will be hard to study. If they exist, they're semi-infinitely far away."
The project is led by Brookhaven National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with collaborators at 52 institutions worldwide. The work was done in Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC).
UC Davi
"We have been trying to melt neutrons and protons, the building blocks of atomic nuclei, into their constituent quarks and gluons," Cebra said. "We needed a lot of heat, pressure and energy, all localized in a small space."
The scientists produced the right conditions with head-on collisions between the nuclei of gold atoms. The resulting quark-gluon plasma lasted an extremely short time - less than 10-20 seconds, Cebra said. But the collision left tracings that the scientists could measure.
"Our work is like accident reconstruction," Cebra said. "We see fragments coming out of a collision, and we construct that information back to very small points."
Quark-gluon plasma was expected to behave like a gas, but the data shows a more liquid-like substance. The plasma is less compressible than expected, which means that it may be able to support the cores of very dense stars.
"If a neutron star gets large and dense enough, it may go through a quark phase, or it may just collapse into a black hole," Cebra said. "To support a quark star, the quark-gluon plasma would need rigidity. We now expect there to be quark stars, but they will be hard to study. If they exist, they're semi-infinitely far away."
The project is led by Brookhaven National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with collaborators at 52 institutions worldwide. The work was done in Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC).
UC Davi
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More Quark-gluon Plasma Current Events and Quark-gluon Plasma News Articles
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Quark-Gluon Plasma: From Big Bang to Little Bang (Cambridge Monographs on Particle Physics, Nuclear Physics and Cosmology) by Kohsuke Yagi (Author), Tetsuo Hatsuda (Author), Yasuo Miake (Author) This book introduces quark gluon-plasma (QGP) as a primordial matter composed of quarks and gluons, created at the time of the "Big Bang". After a pedagogical introduction to gauge theories, various aspects of quantum chromodynamic phase transitions are illustrated in a self-contained manner. The cosmological approach and renormalization group are covered, as well as the cosmological and astrophysical implications of QGP, on the basis of Einstein's equations. Recent developments towards the formation of QGP in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions are also presented in detail. |
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Quark-Gluon Plasma: Theoretical Foundations: An Annotated Reprint Collection by J. Kapusta (Author), B. Müller (Author), J. Rafelski (Author) The purpose of this volume is to trace the development of the theoretical understanding of quark-gluon plasma, both in terms of the equation of state and thermal correlation functions and in terms of its manifestation in high energy nuclear collisions. Who among us has not wondered how tall a mountain is on a neutron star, what happens when matter is heated and compressed to higher and higher densities, what happens when an object falls into a black hole, or what happened eons ago in the early universe? The study of quark-gluon plasma is related in one way or another to these and other thought provoking questions. Oftentimes the most eloquent exposition is given in the original papers. To this end a selection is made of what are the most important... |
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Quark Gluon Plasma 3 by Rudolph C. Hwa (Editor), X. N. Wang (Editor) This is a review monograph on quark–gluon plasma (QGP). Different theoretical and experimental aspects of the program to produce QGP in relativistic heavy-ion collisions are covered by experts in the field. This is the third volume in a series on the subject, and the first such monograph to focus on the implications of the experimental results from RHIC, the relativistic heavy-ion collider at the National Brookhaven Laboratory. The review articles will be useful to experienced researchers as well as to graduate students entering the field. |
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Quark Gluon Plasma and Hadron Physics by P. K. Sahu (Author) Quark Gluon Plasma and Hadron Physics presents a series of review articles on the current research areas in high energy nuclear physics involving theoretical and experimental aspects of quark gluon plasma and the physics of early universe. The topics covered are Field Theory, Basic QCD, High PT Processes (Jets, deep inelastic structure functions), Lattice QCD, Hydrodynamic Evolution, Hadron and QGP phenomenology, Hadrons in medium and Error analysis and simulation. |
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Quark-Gluon Plasma and Heavy Ion Collisions: A Meeting Held in the Framework of the Activities of the Giselda the Italian Working Group on Strong Interactions by Meeting Quark Gluon Plasma and Heavy Ion Collisions (Author), Wanda Maria Alberico (Author), Marzia Nardi (Author), Maria-Paola Lombardo (Author), Wanda Maria Alberico (Editor), Marzia Nardi (Editor), Maria-Paola Lombardo (Editor) Proceedings of a meeting held in the Framework of the Activities of GISELDA, the Italian Working Group on Strong Interactions, held January 14-18, 2002 in Frascati, Italy. Offers the unique possibility of tackling the problem of hadronic deconfinement from different perspectives. |
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Quark-Gluon Plasma (Advanced Series on Directions in High Energy Physics) by Rudolph C. Hwa (Editor) | |
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Die Suche nach dem Quark-Gluon-Plasma: Der kleine Urknall im Labor (Colloquia Academica. Akademievortrage junger Wissenschaftler - Naturwissenschaften) (German Edition) by Carsten H. Greiner (Author) . (Franz Steiner 2002) |
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The Physics of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (Lecture Notes in Physics) by Berndt Muller (Author) | |
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The Logic Of Nature, Complexity And New Physics: From Quark-Gluon Plasma to Superstrings, Quantum Gravity and Beyond : Proceedings of the International School of Subnuclear Physics by Antonino Zichichi (Editor) |
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Physics and Astrophysics of Quark-gluon Plasma by Y.P. Viyogi (Editor) Contributed papers presented at the Third International Conference on Physics and Astrophysics of Quark-Gluon Plasma, held at Jaipur, India in 1997? |
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