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Universal Goo
leapis writes "The NY Times reports that Big Bang Goo may have been found. Scientists at the Bookhaven National Laboratory have 'cracked open protons and neutons like subatomic eggs to create a primordial form of matter that existed when the universe was roughly one-millionth of a second old,' according to recent diagnosic tests."
Because matter that existed when the universe was roughly one-millionth of a second old has been known for a loooong time. Most people call it Zsa Zsa Gabor.
From the article: "AKLAND, Calif., Jan. 13 -- At least three advanced diagnostic tests suggest that an experiment at the Brookhaven National Laboratory has cracked open protons and neutrons like subatomic eggs to create a primordial form of matter that last existed when the universe was roughly one-millionth of a second old, scientists said here on Tuesday.
The hot, dense substance, called a quark-gluon plasma, has managed to generate intense disputes in the 15 years or so in which scientists have pursued it. In 2000, a major European laboratory claimed that it had, for the first time, liberated particles called quarks from where they are normally trapped in protons and neutrons, a big step on the way to creating the plasma.
Possibly seeking to avoid the outpouring of criticism that followed, Brookhaven scientists at the meeting here recited a series of striking new measurements from their particle accelerator in Upton on Long Island, but refused to say that they had actually produced the plasma.
Creating such a plasma would fulfill some of scientists' biggest dreams, because it would enable them to study the earliest moments of the Big Bang, the colossal explosion that is believed to have been the birth of the entire universe.
"I think the most economical explanation of what we're seeing is a quark-gluon plasma," said Dr. William Zajz, a Columbia University physicist who is the spokesman for an experiment, Phenix. "But we're holding ourselves to rigorous, very scientific standards, precisely to distinguish it from previous claims."
Other scientists here said it was clear that the Brookhaven Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider had achieved a milestone.
"The evidence for the quark-gluon plasma is overwhelming," said Miklos Gyulassy, a theorist at Columbia.
Each of the 197 protons and neutrons that make up a gold nucleus has three quarks and a handful of other particles called gluons that transmit the strong force that holds the quarks together. By the strange rules of subatomic physics, swarms of other quarks and gluons flit into and out of existence in each nucleus.
Physicists would like to study the quarks individually, but the force carried by the gluons is something like a rubber band that never loses its elasticity. So a given quark can never escape the embrace of another quark and roam free. The lone exception -- theoretically, at least -- should occur when a collection of ordinary particles becomes so hot and dense that their innards can spill out and form a kind of quark soup, the quark-gluon plasma.
That is the state that the universe is thought to have been in a few millionths of a second after the start of the Big Bang, before the zoo of ordinary particles like protons and neutrons and pions and kaons had coalesced from the primordial soup. A speck of that soup is what the Brookhaven collider seeks to generate, by smashing together gold nuclei at close to the speed of light.
Previous measurements have shown that the lump of material at the center of that collision is from 10 to 100 times as dense as normal nuclear matter. Its temperature is more than a trillion degrees.
The new data, from particle detectors known by their acronyms -- Brahms, Star, Phenix and Phobos -- showed that this searing goo had a remarkable number of properties expected from the plasma.
One finding focused on the almond-shape region, possibly filled with plasma, created when two spherical gold nuclei strike each other, but not quite head on. Theory predicts that fast particles trying to escape the region should become hung up in the gooey plasma and sometimes stopped completely.
That general effect, called jet quenching, had been seen before. But observations by Star have shown for the first time that particles escaping down the long dimension of the almond are more likely to be stopped than those escaping along the short dimension, where there is less plasma to travel through.
"This is demonstrating, if you will, that our unders
My Stack Overflow user
When it comes to scientific goos, I still greatly prefer Silly Putty - no atom smasher required!
... this is with the String Theory ?
Google News allows you to access NYT's news stories without registration.
The article itself calls it "quark-gluon plasma".
It's like extremely hot fire. Extremely hot.
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
...toast points. I love a nice soft-boiled quark-gluon plasma.
I'm sorry about my previous post there. It seemed funny until I actually saw it posted. Oh well, I guess humor is just not my calling in life.
Ok, so we'll have our Lunar Basestation and plasma drives. Sounds good to me. I just hope that Bush doesn't take credit for it.
Only lasted 1E-6 seconds?
Should have used Tupperware(TM)!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I know a secret or two about Goo.
She won't mind if I tell you.
Next thing we'll all be swallowed up by a black hole.
ourpla.net is your planet
I see a simulation of what happened during Plank time.
I was more worried about a spontanious phase transition of the vacuume. Destroying the universe from Upton, NY would be something of a downer. I also imagine it would kind of piss God off.
You don't want to be next in a long line of people walking through the pearly gates only to have St. Peter say, "Not so fast smart-guy. We've got another experiment lined up for you."
He'll get a head on mount rushmore, and they'll "renovate" the Jefferson Memorial.
Because if you repeat it enough it becomes true enough.
some sort of primordeal porridge thats been in the microwave too long... Way too hot. What setting on the microwave takes matter to one trillion degrees?? The mother of all microwaves thats for sure.
I couldn't think of a sig.
NYT online articles can be read via Google News
for example, here's what came up by searching "big bang goo"
~To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. -Yann Martel
'cracked open protons and neutons like subatomic eggs to create a primordial form of matter'
Dumb analogy. Better would be "battered protons and neutrons like subatomic eggs into yolk-eggwhite sludge"
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
Not only that, but the person appologizing for the post is not the original poster.
Here's where you can get a LOT of goo in eggs.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Hmm, Big Bang Goo, sounds like a porn I saw once...
The article says:
Previous measurements have shown that the lump of material at the center of that collision is from 10 to 100 times as dense as normal nuclear matter. Its temperature is more than a trillion degrees.
How do they measure things like this?
mmmm gooo...
~ HOMER
So when is quark-gluon soup going to appear on the menu at the Ritz?
Is there anyone else out there besides me that gets a bit creeped out by these experiments? The philosopher physicists tell us that it is impossible to know what was "before" the big bang because before it, there was nothing at all. I cry BS. My theory: before the big bang there were some idiots in a different spacial dimention standing around some new quantum experiment gizmo, playing with the fundamental bits of their little universe... BLAM!
How do we know that we're not spinning off different universes all the time in the different spatial dimentions with these experiments?! What if we're making huge explosions in their universes? What if they're pissed off and know where we are?
This all smacks to me like shades of Steven King's "The Mist".
Moving matter faster than the posted speed limit is dangerous.
What... no pictures?
...to call it univeral goo. Imagine they are right and someone picks up "goo" from slashdot. Our very existance would be initiated by "goo"!! Blasphemy!
Don't speak about time until you have spoken to him.