Rocking with RHIC

Pete (big-pete) writes "Scienceblog carries a copy of an article which describes some unexpected results found when Physicists started slamming gold atoms together at high speeds. The resulting temperature was tens of thousands of times hotter than the cores of the hottest stars, but the resulting stream of particles did not behave as predicted. The original article is also available from the University of Rochester's news site here."

Comments

Idiocy is grand

[nocomment]

This may seem like a stupid question to some of you, but how do you measure the temperature of an atom?

Re:Idiocy is grand

[frawaradaR]

You don't, since temperature is a statistical measure, corresponding to the mean energy of moving particles in a fairly large collection of particles. What is meant by the temperature of an individual particle is thus simply the temperature that would be if the particle's energy was translated into heat in a particle collection.

Re:Idiocy is grand

[0x69]

Ummm...when you're smashing gold nuclei together fast, there are hundreds or thousands of particles involved - plenty to talk about temperature in the statistical sense. (The two gold nuclei contain hundreds of neutrons & protons, each made up of several quarks and held together by other particles... Nuclei don't act like immutable little ball bearings at the impact speeds these folks are using; it's more like shooting paintballs into each other.)