Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider Confirms Tiny Drops Of Early Universe 'Perfect' Fluid
Friday, September 4, 2015 - 17:50
in Physics & Chemistry
The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory smashes large nuclei together at close to the speed of light to recreate the primordial soup of fundamental particles that existed in the very early universe. Experiments at RHIC have shown that this primordial soup, known as quark-gluon plasma (QGP), flows like a nearly friction free "perfect" liquid. New RHIC data just accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters now confirm earlier suspicions that collisions of much smaller particles can also create droplets of this free-flowing primordial soup, albeit on a much smaller scale, when they collide with the large nuclei. read more