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Data Suggests Early Universe was Superfluid
Ted writes "Experiments at the worlds largest nuclear collider, RHIC, at Brookhaven National Laboratory reveal striking new features of the state of the early Universe. With RHICs enormous collision energy, the researchers can create matter that is composed of the fundamental building blocks of nature, quarks and gluons, in a state with temperatures of more than 1000 billion degrees. The Universe is believed to have been in this state in the first microsecond after the Big Bang. Later the quarks and gluons were trapped in the nuclear particles that the visible universe is composed of today.
Until recently, researchers have thought that the quarks and gluons formed a gas. The latest results from RHIC, however, indicate that under the extreme conditions just around the phase transition from quarks and gluons to ordinary matter, the quarks and gluons behaved as a liquid - in fact an almost perfect liquid."
Of course, all their software is in CVS, so it shouldn't be too hard to check their calculations.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The big bang theory gained more credibility today with some news released by the National Science Foundation and collaborated by a United States team called Maxima with astronomers from the University of Minnesota and the University of California, Berkeley.
The soundwaves that were found are an impression of quantum scale energy fluctuations carried to earth by cosmic microwave background radiation. Scientists were able to measure the waves by looking at cosmic microwave background (CMB). These early soundwaves are thought to have created super and giant clusters of galaxies with their travel. The soundwaves are actually contained in primordial plasma. They are effectively overtones or harmonics of the big bang explosion that is said to have created the universe.
These soundwaves are important because they show two things that are important for understanding our universe in addition to solidifying the big bang AKA inflationary thoery.
# First of note is that the study indicates that the universe is geometrically flat, not curved. # This study also gives credence to the thoery that most of the universe is composed of dark matter.
The discoveries were made by microwave detectors in Antartica, using baloons. The study involved only about 3 percent of the sky, and looked at temperature fluctuations of only 100-millionths of a degree celcius in the CMB.
Obviously nobody profits from the fact that at one time, for a very brief period, the universe acted a little funny.
:-)
However, this has important ramifications in terms of physics. We now know the "what" and "when" - now we need to learn the "why" and "how." Knowledge is never wasted. This may very well be the first baby-step towards warp drive and gravity guns
Only if you stretch the definition of 'liquid' to the point where it loses any meaning at all. By the commonly accepted definition, no, the entire universe is NOT liquid.
Liquid (defined by Education Outreach): One of the basic three phases of matter; characterized by free movement of the constituent molecules among themselves but without the tendency to separate.
This definition precludes most of the real estate in the known Universe.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The term fluid applies to both states of matter. I'm thinking the proper term for the universe would be superliquid.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
Superfluid means more than low viscosity. Specifically, it indicates that the fluid is a degenarate Bose system, which the quark-gluon whateverthefuckitis is not. But the article submitter probably reads science articles in Wired and the NYT, and thinks he can throw the cool-sounding jargon around without anybody noticing that it's bullshit.
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
I'll bite.
The universe is not 6.8 billion years old. It's far older and the proof is our sun. Sol is a third generation star, its makeup is proof in that it's a meager yellow dwarf which will grow large then collapse into a white dwarf. Its parent and grandparent detonated in an amazing supernova which led to the ignition of Sol.
The fact that our solar system is full of heavier elements is proof of our sun's age and lineage. Each atom of lithium, carbon and iron was created in the heat of a supernova.
Yes, thousands of Billions, because people are too stupid to know that the word Trillion exists?
Well, now I know why nobody is worried about the US national debt. 7 Trillion is, like, practially nothing. Let me know when we get to 7000 Billion and I'll start getting worried. And don't tell me that millions of millions crap - it just gets confusing. Besides, a million isn't as much as it used to be. Inflation, you know.
Hint: after Trillion, the next is Quadrillion, and then (hold you breath) Quintillion. Gosh it's, like, a pattern!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The Friedmann equations which form the basis for standard cosmology in general relativity, treat the universe as a perfect fluid, a non-interacting medium characterized by only its density and (isotropic) pressure (the Weyl postulate). Basically, it treats whole galaxies as "particles" in a "cosmological fluid".
Yes your are correct but he was refering to the fact that the word liquid was being used. Liquid and fluid are to completly different things despite common belief. So technically you both are correct in that the univerise is not a liquid but can be explained by fluidics.
However, it may well be possible for solids to exhibit superfluid flow. How? Imagine the flow of a liquid, except that all the atoms in the liquid have a crystal structure, and that entire structure is flowing in lockstep while maintaining a rigid crystalline structure. When Bose-Einstein condensation comes into play, you can have macroscopic coherence of atoms across the entire bulk of material.
Kim and Chan at Penn State claim to have created a supersolid state of matter in helium (and now, hydrogen). It's arguably the biggest experimental result in condensed matter physics right now; if confirmed, it will probably mean the Nobel Prize. However, theoretical studies have so far failed to unambiguously predict the existence of such as state of matter; there are arguments for and against, and the dust hasn't settled. If other experimental groups can replicate these results, we'll know for sure, regardless of whether theory has caught up with nature.
Tiny black holes couldn't be earth devouring. A black hole is a mass that has shrunk to the point to where escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. So a tiny black hole that was, say comprised of 200kg, would have no moure earth devouring ability (gravitationally) than a 200kg person.
if the sun instantly shrunk to a black hole, there would be no change in the earths orbit, or any of the planets, the gravitational pull would be _exactly_ the same as before.
Just some clarification on what a common misconception of blackholes being 'devouring' objects.
Entropy. Over cosmic scales, clumping together becomes the lower energy state due to gravity's small but extremely wide-ranging effects.
The parent comment is a non-sequitor.
The CMB results have very little to do with the Brookhaven RHIC results. The CMB uniformity tells you nothing about the hydrodynamic properties of the quark-gluon plasma. The CMB does tell you about the electron-nucleon plasma that happened later.
And yes, I am a physicist.
The papers from the RHIC collaborations. The "liquid" state of quark-gluon plasma being discussed is called a color glass condensate.
We are all agreed that 1 million = 1x10^6.
In the world (Britain, France, and Germany) where 1 billion = 1 million million (1x10^12), then 1 trillion = 1 million billion (1x10^18) or another way 1 trillion = 1 million million million (tri-million), or million cubed, to the power of three, as in tri.
In the parts of the wolrd (US & Canada) where 1 billion = 1000 million (1x10^9), then 1 trillion = 1 million million (1x10^12) so 1 trillion = 1000 billion.
As it is an American lab, it will be 1x10^12.
Personally, i feel the Americans just like their numbers sounding bigger.
You're halfway there, but for the wrong reason. A tiny black hole just bumps into atomic nuclei less frequently, since it is sitting in a big pool of them (the Earth, since it fell out of whatever created it).
The problem with all this, however, is that tiny black holes evaporate, and therefore won't stick around very long. Physics collider ones don't stick around long enough to leave the vacuum chamber, let alone fall through the floor. See also Micro black holes.
The statement "The biggest collider" is not correct, a simmilar installation, but by ways larger is the CERN in Genf (Switzerland). The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) measures about 7 Kilometers, or 4.34 Miles in Circumference. According to the CERN Website, a new gigantic collider is planned, that will measure incomprehensable 49 Kilometers in circumference. Another new hadron collider is the TESLA Installation in Hamburg (Germany). It will be a Tandem linear Collider, with it's origin in the DESY complex, wich is a pretty large Research installation itself, check their Website.
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