Scientists associated with CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have created quark-gluon plasma, a matter thought to exist at the birth of the universe, using a shockingly small amount of particles.
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And, although physicists have, in the past, detected this exotic state of matter, the latest study confirms that droplets of this soup can be created through collisions of much smaller particles, such as helium-3 nuclei – containing two protons and one neutron – and gold ions. For a short time before the plasma cools and compresses into the building blocks of matter, it remains to be what is called as a “perfect liquid”.
But researcher Quan Wang said that the analysis in the experiment’s paper indicated that, contrary to their expectations, quark-gluon plasma can be generated in extremely asymmetric proton-to-lead collisions.
The collision of particle forced ions to come together at roughly the speed of light, revealing the elusive plasma comprising of gluons and quarks.
The scientists in charge of the Compact Muon Solenoid detector declared that this surprising discovery is a milestone for high-energy physics research.
The researcher described quark-gluon plasma as a very hot and dense state of matter of unbound quarks and gluons – that is, not contained within individual nucleons. “The interplay between partons-quarks and gluons-inside the quark-gluon plasma is robust, which distinguishes the quark-gluon plasma from a gaseous state the place one expects little interplay among the many constituent particles”. Scientists believed that this was the only case in which this plasma is produced.
“This is the first paper that clearly shows multiple particles are correlated to each other in proton-lead collisions, similar to what is observed in lead-lead collisions where quark-gluon plasma is produced”. They have made quark-gluon plasma-a area of problem thought of as existing at the Big Bang. Being able to form a quark-gluon plasma in proton-lead collisions helps us to better define the conditions needed for its existence.
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The QGP, which was first created at the RHIC in 2005, has since been re-created at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The group is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.
