For the past five years, hundreds of scientists have been using a powerful new atom smasher at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island to mimic conditions that existed at the birth of the universe. Called the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC, pronounced "rick"), it clashes two opposing beams of gold nuclei traveling at nearly the speed of light. The resulting collisions between pairs of these atomic nuclei generate exceedingly hot, dense bursts of matter and energy to simulate what happened during the first few microseconds of the big bang. These brief "mini bangs" give physicists a ringside seat on some of the earliest moments of creation.

During those early moments, matter was an ultrahot, superdense brew of particles called quarks and gluons rushing hither and thither and crashing willy-nilly into one another. A sprinkling of electrons, photons and other light elementary particles seasoned the soup. This mixture had a temperature in the trillions of degrees, more than 100,000 times hotter than the sun's core.

This article was originally published with the title The First Few Microseconds.

3 Comments

1. 1. Jim OHara 12:40 AM 12/4/07

   Thankyou

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2. 2. deanlsinclair 11:21 AM 7/20/08

   Several things disturb me about this entire approach. One is the assumption of reality of Qwarks and Gluons which are totally hypothetical particles. Another is that the "Strong and Weak Nuclear Forces" also are assumed to have reality, when, in fact, both are very possibly the result of the rather naive assumption that neutrons exist, as such in nuclei.
   It may be presumptious to do so, but, I would like to ask the people doing this kind of work if their results might not fit with some of my ideas expressed in the "Oscillator/Substance Model, information about which can be found in several places on the internet including my "pseudo-blog" at www.deanlsinclair.blogspot.com. Dean L. Sinclair(BA, MS, Ph.D) deanlsinclair@gmail.com

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3. 3. alexander khosrovyan 02:20 AM 1/31/10

   I believe very strongly in the theory of the expanding universe but like wise the contracting universe too. This I base on a very simple thruth that what goes up must come down dus what expands must contract too. Having said this I belive that there has been a series of BIGBANGS, or better said a continuation of BIGBANGS. From fienite to 14 billion years of expanding universe and likewisw short/long contraction. Thus back to fienite state.
   
   alexander khosrovyan

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