Looking for Quark-Gluon Plasma? 52
uctbruce writes "Following the June press release from Brookhaven National Lab, nuclear physicists from around the world are discussing the results of the 4 RHIC experiments (PHOBOS, STAR, PHENIX and BRAHMS), the New York Times ran an article on the Quark Matter conference in Oakland. Have we re-created the first microseconds of the big bang in the lab? (Have a look at the Google cluster of stories)"
So are we making really short lived universes? (Score:4, Interesting)
Could each of these experiments create an another realty?
Re:So are we making really short lived universes? (Score:5, Informative)
The Big Bang wasn't just a bunch of material blasting outwards into space. It was space itself expanding out of what was, effectively, nothing (The laws of physics break in a singularity, which was what the universe was to begin with. Science can't say anything about it, since there's no proximate way to study or model it).
Also, this plasma is still a form of matter, however torn-apart it is. The first picoseconds of the big bang were nothing but intense energy. Plasma formed after a short time, and eventually associated into "large" structures like protons and such. We're making this plasma.
To think this is making a short-lived universe would be like thinking that making a bunch of smoke and throwing debris around would be making an explosion. It's not the Big Bang we're creating, but its product.
Re:So are we making really short lived universes? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:So are we making really short lived universes? (Score:1)
Thank God we're still alive (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for learning and experimenting but just scares me to think of the magnitudes these could have. We have always been experimenting with things we don't fully understand. It seems to be just a matter of time before someone ends up blowing an entire country off the face of the earth... or worse.
Save me Jebus (Score:2, Insightful)
As opposed to investigating the unknown, we should create elaborate competing mythologies and kill all those who don't agree with us.
Re:Thank God we're still alive (Score:5, Insightful)
Fusion needs a lot of heat and pressure to occur. If a fusion chamber were to fail, the fusion would stop almost instantly, and a plume of hot hydrogen/helium would come out and rise upwards very quickly, where it would cool rapidly. The people near the reactor would be in serious danger, and an airplane directly over the plant may be in danger (Which is why it's a good idea to have no-fly zones over power plants in general), but people living a couple miles away would be safe as long as the fire department was running on time.
This experiment is another simmilar thing. It's just a bunch of plasma in a chamber. If it gets out, it cools rapidly and dissipates. Dangerous if you're sitting on it, but nothing to worry about otherwise.
Fission, on the other hand, can start cold, and even if it stops, the material you're left with is still radioactive. If fission stops, you just have a bunch of helium floating around, and it's not all that dangerous.
Re:Thank God we're still alive (Score:1, Insightful)
You make it sound like more than it is, unless by 'a bunch of plasma' you mean a microscopic speck. These experiments aren't 'recreating the big bang', that's just reporters trying to make it sound interesting because the don't really know enough about it to find it interesting for it's real value. Th
Re:Thank God we're still alive (Score:1)
god is dead; we're alive (Score:2)
charmed life (Score:5, Interesting)
During the Manhattan Project, some physicists feared that splitting the uranium atoms with a critical mass would start a chain reaction in the atmosphere, destabilizing all nuclei within reach, thereby consuming all the matter of Earth in a total mass->energy conversion. They guessed wrong. Out in Brookhaven (only about 0.00528s from me, as the photon flies), there were similar concerns a few years ago, prior to synthesis of the first all-strange quark matter, fearing a chain reaction turning the planet entirely strange. Also turned out to be merely a paper tiger. Now we're going for these exotic hi-energy plasmas. And our high-energy and exotic-order syntheses are only accelerating in their frequency of invention. Most of these researches are funded for weapons production, which values maximum destruction. How long will our luck hold out?
Re:charmed life (Score:5, Informative)
The speculation was that it would ignite the nitrogen in the atmosphere. Not only was it immediately found to be nonsense, but it was pointless from the start. The universe has smacked the Earth around with astroids and comets that make nukes look like PopRocks candy.
The Hiroshima blast was around 13 kilotons.
The Chicxulub impact was around 100 billion kilotons.
(Chicxulub was the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, it generated tidal waves, it splattered the earth's crust, it darkened the skies with dust and smoke, but it certainly didn't start a "chain reaction" igniting the atmosphere or starting a mass-energy conversion.)
synthesis of the first all-strange quark matter, fearing a chain reaction turning the planet entirely strange...
Now we're going for these exotic hi-energy plasmas
You forgot to mention the producing minature black holes.
And none of it is exotic. The universe bombards the earth with cosmic rays several orders of magnitude more powerful than anything we can dream of cooking up in any collider we could build. There is a steady bombardment of "exotic strange matter" and "exotic hi-energy plasmas" and minature black holes raining down over your head every day.
Our "high energy physicists" are nothing but little children playing with pop-guns. If this stuff was dangerous then they universe would wipe out the planet several times a day with it's big guns.
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Re:charmed life (Score:1)
It was never tested or something because they were afraid it would fuse all the O2 into H20 and everyone would die.
Though i'm sure it's just a rumor. (glancing at tinfoil hat on desk)
Re:charmed life (Score:1)
Eek! Burning Hydrogen! Run! Run!...Oh wait..it's gone.
Re:charmed life (Score:3, Informative)
Hell, for that matter, most colleges do the experiment in Chem 100.
Here's what you do: Get a thin-walled container (a baloon works well), and put 2 liters of hydrogen (H2) and 1 liter of oxygen (O2) in it, rupture it, and set off a spark.
You'll end up producing a puff of water vapor which will dissipate very quickly (You can't drown somebody with this unless you have millions of gallons or something). What does damage with a bomb like this is the shock wave.
When
Re:charmed life (Score:4, Interesting)
There are very good reasons why this isn't a practical weapon. First, the volumes required to do significant damage are huge. Imagine filling a 1,000lb bomb casing with Hydrogen and Oxygen. It wouldn't accomplish much. Of course, you could liquify it, but then your cost skyrockets. I think the closest thing to what you're discussing is the Fuel/Air explosive, which has the wholehearted endorsement of the defense industry.
Second, if I were a pilot, and someone suggested to me that I fly around a combat zone with a cannister full of hydrogen and oxygen under my wing, I'd decline. Remember the Hindenberg? Centuries of development have given us explosives with higher activation energies.
As to your closing statement: the universe is huge, and not at all homogenous. There are a great many things in it that haven't come anywhere near us in our planet's relatively brief existence. I'm not arguing for the atmosphere-liquification particle, I'm just saying that your reasoning is specious.
Re:charmed life (Score:2, Insightful)
It should be pointed out that the maximum destruction paradigm of war has passed. Thirty years ago, you couldn't get a nickle if your bomb wasn't at least 80 megatons, but look at most of the current arsenals. The largest weapons used are 20,000 pounds - ten tons. And the most heaviliy used weapons are ones that have a remarkably small yeild, and normally don't destroy entire buildings. Even during the Cold War,
Re:Thank God we're still alive (Score:5, Informative)
The people near the reactor would be in serious danger, and an airplane directly over the plant may be in danger
Even this is doubtful. Because fusion is so efficient, there is no need for much plasma in a magnetic confinement reactor (current ignition attempts seem to work with densities on the order of 10^21/m^3 - about 1/10000 the particle density of the atmosphere at sea level), and should the walls fail, almost all of the excess thermal energy would be dissipated before the gas could leave the building. The main problem with a structural failure is the liberated magnetic field, which may throw chunks of metal around.
Re:Thank God we're still alive (Score:2, Interesting)
What the hell kind of mangled expression is that? An experiment does not generally "have" magnitudes. (Measurements and numbers have magnitudes.) An experiment may have implications or scope though.
Re:Thank God we're still alive (Score:2)
Well, I answered a similar comment when this story was posted yesterday and my reply rated a score 4, so I'll just answer you with a copy and paste, chuckle
it already happens countless times every day anyway. The Earth's atmosphere (and every object in the universe) is continuously bombarded by cosmic rays - atomic neuclei with orders of magnitude more energy more than we can muster in any accelerato
Re:Thank God we're still alive (Score:1, Redundant)
Yes, that's why people experiment with things, because they don't understand them. If we fully understood something, there'd be no need to experiment.
Your objections seem a bit out of order. The particle experiments that are being done contain less energy than in a fastball, it's just highly concentrated.
It's impossible for anyone to blow up anything more than the apparatus with a fusion experiment, as the reaction stops as soon
Good question (Score:5, Funny)
Yes!
I think the only answer that you can respond with is "maybe."
Re:Good question (Score:1)
Duplicate article (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Duplicate article (Score:5, Funny)
"Have we re-created the first microseconds of the big bang in the lab?"
The /. editors once again have re-created the article for scientific purposes
Nope. (Score:2)
If you recreated the first microseconds of the Big Bang, then none of us would be here....
Re:PHOBOS, STAR, PHENIX and BRAHMS?? (Score:1)
What are Bot names from quake?
Re:PHOBOS, STAR, PHENIX and BRAHMS?? (Score:1)
clever consistency = homonculi? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:clever consistency = homonculi? (Score:2, Funny)
Same article as yesterday (Score:1)
No a complete picture (Score:1)
This is just a way of saying that we can't explain why, but trust me we are right.
Don't get me wrong I'm in favor of scientific discov
Re:No a complete picture (Score:2, Interesting)
They say that they made a small amount of matter in one of its earliest forms following the big bang.
What can it tell them about the big bang? Well, we have this knolwege gap from about 10^-65 to 10^0 seconds as to what exactly was going on with subatomic particles. They it in with speculation, but they've never had any impirical clue how any of these exotic kinds of plasma and neutrinos they had populating the early universe would actually behave. If w
Re:No a complete picture (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is not that "The laws of physics break in a singularity". It's that understanding the Planck era (first 10E-40 seconds, I think) requires reconciling quantum theories with general relativity.
And scientists don't
Sounds like a spam.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Sounds like a spam.... (Score:2)
L00king f0r Qu@rk-G1u0n Pl@sm@?
Wouldn't want to trigger any antisubnucleonic spam filters, don't ya know....
Re:weeeh! (Score:1)
Beginning of the Universe in a Lab? (Score:1)
Perhaps, its hard to tell until we merge quantum gravity with relativity before we know the physical laws of the universe completely.
Kris Holland [mailto]
It's the little things... (Score:1)