To help cosmologists refine their still-fuzzy picture of the early universe, researchers have essentially created a “Little Bang” and are using it to figure out how the planets, stars, and galaxies of today were made. 📷: Brookhaven National Laboratory
To do this, they needed to look for upsilons, which weren’t actually present at the beginning of the universe but are a byproduct of the Brookhaven beam collisions. Upsilons are comprised of a quark and itstwin bound together in one of three configurations: a tightly tethered “ground state” and two excited states, one looser than the other. Slamming the gold nuclei together produces a slew of them in each of these three states.
“The idea is to use these particles as a thermometer,” Caines says. A plasma like the one that theoretically existed microseconds after the Big Bang can rip these upsilons apart; interactions with the free quarks and gluons melt them down to their most basic elements. And each state has its own “melting point.” Ground-state upsilons would need the most energy—the hottest temperatures—to fall apart, and the more loosely bound quark-antiquark pairs would need less.
That, in turn, would tell physicists about other properties of the quark-gluon plasma, because its temperature is intrinsically linked to its density, pressure, and viscosity. Ultimately, scientists want to be able to solve what they call an equation of state: a mathematical expression describing all of the plasma’s properties, how they influence each other, and how they evolve with time.
The quark-gluon plasma is a unique system: It’s extremely hot but also tiny—on the order of the diameter of a proton, Noronha-Hostler says. So it doesn’t obey the usual laws of how fluids act. “We can write down equations, but we can’t solve them,” she says.
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Kaley Cuoco shares new pics of baby Matilda settling in at home: ‘Girl gang’The former “Big Bang Theory” star, who shares Matilda with her boyfriend, 'Ozark' star Tom Pelphrey, posted several adorable pics of her little girl.
Read more »
‘The Jet,’ Jason Terry, is helping to lift the Utah Jazz higherIn his first year on Will Hardy’s Utah Jazz staff, Jason Terry is playing a big role in developing the team’s culture, thanks to the hoops knowledge and locker-room insights gleaned from 19 years as a player in the NBA. TakeNote
Read more »
Man sentenced for helping Pa. teacher catfish hundreds of students for explicit photosKray Strange, who had previously gone through court-mandated sex offender treatment, was found guilty of exploiting over 200 victims.
Read more »
Split-site doctorates are helping to build Africa’s research baseUniversity partnerships that let PhD students split their time between two countries and keep jobs at home have many benefits.
Read more »
USD/INR: RBI to maintain a hawkish bias, helping to mitigate Rupee weakness – CommerzbankEconomists at Commerzbank discuss Thursday’s RBI decision and the outlook for the Indian Rupee. We may even see another 50-75 bps hike in total this y
Read more »
Is global warming helping loggerhead turtles colonise the Med?Growing numbers of loggerhead sea turtles are nesting and laying eggs on western Mediterranean beaches in what some scientists suggest could be a case of climate change causing habitat expansion of a threatened species.
Read more »