Physicists find surprising 'liquid-like' particle interactions in Large Hadron Collider
Thursday, July 23, 2015 - 06:10
in Physics & Chemistry
Three years ago, Rice physicists and their colleagues on the Large Hadron Collider's (LHC's) Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment stumbled on an unexpected phenomenon. Physicists smashed protons into lead nuclei at nearly the speed of light, which caused hundreds of particles to erupt from these collisions. But that wasn't the surprise. What was surprising is where these particles went: Rather than spreading out evenly in all directions, the particles coming out of the collisions preferentially lined up in a specific direction.