Quark-Gluon Plasma Observed At LHC

Canadian_Daemon writes "A phase of matter created moments after the Big Bang is thought to have been detected at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. 'Striking' evidence of a quark-gluon plasma has been observed by a team of researchers, including Canadians, at the facility near Geneva, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced Friday."

Re:As a Canadian, I like to watch...

[tomhudson]

Don't be such a wimp. Even at -30, the dogs have to be walked for half an hour first thing in the morning before work and again in the evening after work.

As long as it's not windy, I don't care. That's what boots, coats, hats, sweaters, gloves, etc., are made for.

Not warm enough? Put on another layer and MOVE AROUND! You'll warm up to it.

Winter's not going to go away for a few months, so might as well enjoy it.

-- Barbie

Flag should be a white cross on a red background

[crovira]

Why there's a red maple leaf there is beyond me.

I'm a Canadian and like to toot our own horn but this was done by an international consortium in Geneva.

C'mon guys. Get the story straight.

Re:Including Canadians, and...

[circletimessquare]

1. Quark gluon plasmas are rare in Switzerland
2. Canadians are rare in Switzerland

3. Therefore, anything related to quark gluon plasmas is intrinsically Canadian in nature

this is all perfectly logical

Thanks

[Roger W Moore]

Thanks, but it is actually an international effort with those of us in Canada working on ATLAS making up ~5% of the collaboration. For those with a more technical mind there is the actual paper [cdsweb.cern.ch] which was accepted by PRL this morning (after being submitted yesterday!). To give you an idea of what the events actually look like you can go here [twiki.cern.ch]. As you can see there are around 1,000 tracks in a typical event!

RHIC

[Lawrence_Bird]

all the Candian jokes are nice and all.. but this really was about trying to make people think CERN is the only thing going on in HEP or nuclear physics. Not so, and this is not a first as RHIC was there first. [bnl.gov] Glad to see CERN is catching up though.

Re:As a Canadian, I like to watch...

[Sulphur]

I think the comment was simply to emphasize the canadian angle as it was reported on CBC.

Not obtuse or acute, its just right.

Re:Thanks

[Heed00]

I was wondering why the submitter included the part "including Canadians". What was that supposed to mean? Why was it there? Like, it's in Europe but someone from America was there too! Moronic submitter.

Actually, its from the article source which is the CBC -- Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It's just the local news agency pointing out that locals were involved in the experiment.

Re:Thanks

[sznupi]

Not exactly, I get (however small) new work units semi-regularly. Possibly in every month of this year there was something.

Re:Thanks

[Roger W Moore]

Now if they would issue 64-bit jobs for Linux hosts on LHC@Home, I would totally help!

Actually you would probably not want to help for long! Analyzing data from an experiment is I/O intensive as well as CPU intensive plus the executables are very large and require ~2GB/core to run so they are not really a suitable scale for an @home project unfortunately.

Re:Thanks

[Roger W Moore]

Yawn.. and I say thanks as an American taxpayer that RHIC was first

It's true that RHIC came before the LHC but the SPS and ISR came well before RHIC and none of these have really produced compelling evidence of a QGP. However don't worry - as an American taxpayer you also helped pay for the LHC, so thanks!

Re:Am I missing something?

[slackbheep]

As a Canadian I'd like to point out something you may not yet be privy to: The CBC is awful. Also, Canada has content broadcasting restrictions, requiring X% of broadcast content to be "Canadian", it's always been a kinda goofy requirement, and I wouldn't be shocked to find out that mentions of Canadian contributions to worldwide projects are included in their quota. :P Either way, ridiculous indeed.