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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."

2 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. 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.