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Looking for Quark-Gluon Plasma?
uctbruce writes "Following the June press release from Brookhaven National Lab, nuclear physicists from around the world are discussing the results of the 4 RHIC experiments (PHOBOS, STAR, PHENIX and BRAHMS), the New York Times ran an article on the Quark Matter conference in Oakland. Have we re-created the first microseconds of the big bang in the lab? (Have a look at the Google cluster of stories)"
They've really only recreated a *possible* representation of the material makeup of the very early universe. The potential for learning about the Big Bang is pretty impressive from this, but it's really only a surface feature of the universe's beginning.
The Big Bang wasn't just a bunch of material blasting outwards into space. It was space itself expanding out of what was, effectively, nothing (The laws of physics break in a singularity, which was what the universe was to begin with. Science can't say anything about it, since there's no proximate way to study or model it).
Also, this plasma is still a form of matter, however torn-apart it is. The first picoseconds of the big bang were nothing but intense energy. Plasma formed after a short time, and eventually associated into "large" structures like protons and such. We're making this plasma.
To think this is making a short-lived universe would be like thinking that making a bunch of smoke and throwing debris around would be making an explosion. It's not the Big Bang we're creating, but its product.
This article has the same subject and some of the same references as this one from yesterday.
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
The people near the reactor would be in serious danger, and an airplane directly over the plant may be in danger
Even this is doubtful. Because fusion is so efficient, there is no need for much plasma in a magnetic confinement reactor (current ignition attempts seem to work with densities on the order of 10^21/m^3 - about 1/10000 the particle density of the atmosphere at sea level), and should the walls fail, almost all of the excess thermal energy would be dissipated before the gas could leave the building. The main problem with a structural failure is the liberated magnetic field, which may throw chunks of metal around.
"Your notation sucks!" -- Serge Lang (1927-2005)
some physicists feared that splitting the uranium atoms with a critical mass would start a chain reaction in the atmosphere... a total mass->energy conversion
The speculation was that it would ignite the nitrogen in the atmosphere. Not only was it immediately found to be nonsense, but it was pointless from the start. The universe has smacked the Earth around with astroids and comets that make nukes look like PopRocks candy.
The Hiroshima blast was around 13 kilotons.
The Chicxulub impact was around 100 billion kilotons.
(Chicxulub was the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, it generated tidal waves, it splattered the earth's crust, it darkened the skies with dust and smoke, but it certainly didn't start a "chain reaction" igniting the atmosphere or starting a mass-energy conversion.)
synthesis of the first all-strange quark matter, fearing a chain reaction turning the planet entirely strange...
Now we're going for these exotic hi-energy plasmas
You forgot to mention the producing minature black holes.
And none of it is exotic. The universe bombards the earth with cosmic rays several orders of magnitude more powerful than anything we can dream of cooking up in any collider we could build. There is a steady bombardment of "exotic strange matter" and "exotic hi-energy plasmas" and minature black holes raining down over your head every day.
Our "high energy physicists" are nothing but little children playing with pop-guns. If this stuff was dangerous then they universe would wipe out the planet several times a day with it's big guns.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Sorta-kinda-maybe. It actually was tested.
Hell, for that matter, most colleges do the experiment in Chem 100.
Here's what you do: Get a thin-walled container (a baloon works well), and put 2 liters of hydrogen (H2) and 1 liter of oxygen (O2) in it, rupture it, and set off a spark.
You'll end up producing a puff of water vapor which will dissipate very quickly (You can't drown somebody with this unless you have millions of gallons or something). What does damage with a bomb like this is the shock wave.
When you light off that 3 liter baloon, the sound is considerably louder than a gunshot. Some people in my chem class claimed it was even painful through their rifle-range earmuffs, and it was certainly audible through them. You set up a large bomb using the same principle, and it can collapse buildings or bunkers as well as an incendiary bomb, and much cheaper.
They did test it, but they never used it because inmost countries with advanced militaries, defence industries are major lobies. One of these water bombs can do, for a few thousand dollars (allowing for the $25 screws!) what most governments pay tens or hundreds of thusands, even millions, to accomplish with conventional bombs.
If there were any force in the universe that would cause our entire atmosphere to ignite, freeze, liquify, or turn into an army of naked women, it would have run into us at some time during the last billion years anyway, and we wouldn't be here to worry about it.