What's hot??...Quark Soup

HOTTEST TEMPERATURE ATTAINED

......Recent analyses from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a 2.4-mile-circumference "atom smasher" at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, establish that collisions of gold ions traveling at nearly the speed of light have created matter at a temperature of about 4 trillion degrees Celsius -- the hottest temperature ever reached in a laboratory, about 250,000 times hotter than the center of the Sun.

RHIC's gold-gold collisions produce a freely flowing liquid composed of quarks and gluons. Such a substance, often referred to as quark-gluon plasma, or QGP, filled the universe a few microseconds after it came into existence 13.7 billion years ago. At RHIC, this liquid appears, and the quoted temperature is reached, in less time than it takes light to travel across a single proton.

Hot gas vs. hot liquid

Scientists believe that a plasma of quarks and gluons existed a few microseconds after the birth of the universe, before cooling and condensing to form the protons and neutrons that make up all the matter around us -- from individual atoms to stars, planets, and people. Although the matter produced at RHIC survives for much less than a billionth of a trillionth of a second, its properties can be determined using RHIC's highly sophisticated detectors to look at the thousands of particles emitted during its brief lifetime. The measurements provide new insights into Nature's strongest force -- in essence, what holds all the protons and neutrons of the universe together.

RHIC is making huge strides in field of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong force.{A fundamental force describing the interactions of the quarks and gluons making up hadrons (such as the proton, neutron or pions)}.

Physics Nobel 2008 - awarded to symmetry breaking 13.7 billion years ago

Three researchers in so-called broken symmetry, which helps to explain the intricate workings of the smallest constituents of the universe, were awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics today. Half the prize went to Yoichiro Nambu of the University of Chicago, with the other half shared by Makoto Kobayashi of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan, and Toshihide Maskawa of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics at Kyoto University.

All three men were rewarded for work done decades ago: Nambu for his description of “spontaneous broken symmetry” in the 1960s and Kobayashi and Maskawa for their work on symmetries and elementary particles known as quarks in the 1970s.

In 1960 Nambu described spontaneous broken symmetry, which “conceals nature’s order under an apparently jumbled surface,” according to the Nobel committee. (The committee illustrated this principle by holding up an orange—although it’s useful to describe the fruit as a sphere, it actually deviates from sphericity in subtle ways when examined up close.) Nambu’s work helps to inform the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which describes the behavior of elementary particles and three of the four fundamental forces that govern nature. (Gravity, the fourth force, has not yet found a place in the Standard Model—physicists hope that the Large Hadron Collider will help to resolve this problem once it begins operating next year.) 

Specifically, Nambu’s work describes how these fundamental forces can be so different, and how elementary particles, including the particles that mediate those forces, can have such disparate masses—according to the Nobel committee, the top quark is more than 300,000 times heavier than the electron, whereas the photon has no mass at all.

“Nambu profoundly deepened our understanding of mass,” Curtis Callan of Princeton University, vice president of the American Physical Society (APS), said in an APS statement. “His prescient work of the early 60s today allows us to explain how the proton and neutron (and, by extension, the atomic nucleus) can be made of nearly massless quark constituents and yet be very massive.”

Kobayashi and Maskawa, in their work, predicted the existence of three families of quarks—only two were known at the time—a prediction that was borne out in later particle accelerator experiments. This work helps to explain why all particles are not always symmetrical, including making a differentiation between particles and their antiparticles. This differentiation is critical to the universe’s existence—matter and antimatter annihilate when they come in contact, so somewhere along the line, matter must have had an edge over its counterpart to form the cosmos we inhabit today. (Both were created in equal amounts in the big bang, some 14 billion years ago.) 

The two men “developed a framework for describing the intrinsic mass of quarks which has been verified in spectacular experimental detail,” Callan said in his statement. “Their work provides a framework for understanding why matter vastly dominates over antimatter in our universe."

In a postconference Webcast interview, Per Carlson of the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden said that the work of the 2008 Nobelists “allows us to understand the Standard Model of particle physics.” Said Gunnar Öquist, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in announcing the prize, “Thanks to symmetry breaking, we sit here.” 

Devoted

This blog is devoted to Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996). He was an American astronomer, astrochemist, author, and highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics and other natural sciences. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).Sagan's capability to convey his ideas allowed many people to better understand the Cosmos — simultaneously emphasizing the value and worthiness of the human race, and the relative insignificance of the earth in comparison to the universe.
He quoted>>>

1)The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.

2)We embarked on our cosmic voyage with a question first framed in the childhood of our species and in each generation asked anew with undiminished wonder: What are the stars? Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.