RHIC Finds Symmetry Transformations In Quark Soup

eldavojohn writes "Today scientists at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in Brookhaven National Laboratory revealed new observations after creating a 'quark soup' that revealed hints of profound symmetry transformations when collisions create conditions in which temperatures reach four trillion degrees Celsius. A researcher explains the implications, 'RHIC's collisions of heavy nuclei at nearly light speed are designed to re-create, on a tiny scale, the conditions of the early universe. These new results thus suggest that RHIC may have a unique opportunity to test in the laboratory some crucial features of symmetry-altering bubbles speculated to have played important roles in the evolution of the infant universe.' These new findings hint at violations of mirror symmetry or parity by witnessing asymmetric charge separation in these collisions."

Comments

Re:Relativism

[mrsquid0]

The Planck temperature is the highest temperature that our current physics can work at. Temperatures higher than the Planck temperature require a theory of quantum gravity to understand. The Planck temperature is about 1.4e+32 kelvin. One day, when we have a working theory of quantum gravity, perhaps the maximum possible temperature will be higher, but until then this is the highest temperature that is possible assuming the laws of physics that we know about.