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Rocking with RHIC

Posted by michael on from the science-headlines-less-funny-than-others dept.

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."

4 of 19 comments (clear)

  1. Whew! by gnovos · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    Considering that one of the predictions, if I remember correctly, was the possibility of creating a new vaccum state that would rocket out from the earth at the speed of light destroying all the universe that lay in it's path... I'm pretty relieved that the behavior was a little different than expected. :)

    --
    "Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
  2. Re:Idiocy is grand by frawaradaR · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    frawaradaR anahaha islaginaR!
  3. Re:Idiocy is grand by 0x69 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.)

    --
    It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
  4. Very confused article. by Peter+T+Ermit · · Score: 5, Informative
    For example, the researchers didn't "...[collide] the circular gold atoms slightly off-center" in order "to simplify their observations." The atoms just collide off center most of the time naturally.

    A bit denser, but much more accurate story about RHIC is here.