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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."
Well, String Theory ought to be able to handle this. If it can't, then String Theory is out.
From what I know of String Theory (very little), it is consistent.
The "quark-gluon plasma" is a description from the point of view of the Standard Model of quantum mechanics.
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
String theory *could* explain this, but it describes exactly the same behavior as quantum theory, only with math that is orders of magnitude more complex.
The "quark-gluon plasma" is a description from the point of view of the Standard Model of quantum mechanics.
Yes, and this would be the first time that this aspect of quantum mechanics had some actual proof that it can make predictions about the real world. Very important.
As I understand it, being able to prove that string theory works may never even be possible, because it would require a super collider bigger than the earth, using more energy in 1 second that the sun has produced in its entire life so far.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
You're right about the launch costs for the detectors. The detectors are several thousand tons and a fortune to launch, but still probably in a reasonable ballpark for a supercollider. The magnets are about a tousand tons each - possibly deal breaker if you need too many.
One big problem is that there is no way to get the collisions to occur inside the detectors. The cosmic rays are coming at random from every direction. Any sort of "lens" can only focus stuff coming from a known direction. If the source direction is unknown then you can't focus anything.
A second big problem is that only a few hundred of the highest energy particles hit all of the earth per day - an enormous target. You could put up a football feild sized detector and wait years to see a single event.
A third problem is that the collisions will be extremely "unbalanced". In the Brookhaven collider they have two nuclei collide head-on, the speeds cancel out and the resulting fireball is pretty much "parked" in the center of the detector. If a cosmic ray hits a stationary target inside the detector then the resulting fireball will shoot out the back of the detector at nearly the speed of light. This compresses results into a hard to measure cone or jet.
A fourth lesser problem is that you don't know what particle came in and you don't know how fast it was going. Maybe it was a single insanely fast proton or maybe it was a vastly slower lead nucleus. The data would still be valuable, but it would be a major headache to give it solid meaning.
Despite all of that, these cosimic rays have still been harnessed do science. There are ground stations that look up at the sky and watch the shower of debris raining down from such events. It gives a pathetic view of the collision itself, but still useful.
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