A note on "Quark Soup"

[Kwok Man Hui]

According to May 2006 issue of Scientific American magazine, a group
of physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have used the newly
built Ralativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to re-create the liquid stuff
of the earliest universe. The article said the experiment surprised the
physicists because the meshed quarks behaved more like perfect liquid than
like perfect gas.

I am wondering if one day some supercolliders had created stuff with
quasi-crystal behavior or with more viscous behavior at even higher
temperature, say over electroweak energy scale 10 quadrillion degree
Celsius or higher, how big would the surprise be?

Charles Hui

[Cl.Massé]

"Kwok Man Hui" <kmhui@math.utexas.edu> a écrit dans le message de news:
Pine.LNX.4.62.0605151821460.9205@lab57.ma.utexas.e du

> According to May 2006 issue of Scientific American magazine, a group
> of physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have used the newly
> built Ralativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to re-create the liquid stuff
> of the earliest universe. The article said the experiment surprised the
> physicists because the meshed quarks behaved more like perfect liquid than
> like perfect gas.
>
> I am wondering if one day some supercolliders had created stuff with
> quasi-crystal behavior or with more viscous behavior at even higher
> temperature, say over electroweak energy scale 10 quadrillion degree
> Celsius or higher, how big would the surprise be?

Tiny, we have no knowledge at all under those conditions, nothing can
surprise us, but surely will embarrass us.

It isn't a gas that was expected, but a plasma. The difference between a
gas and a liquid is inter atomic distance. With elementary particles, that
has no sense, there are only fluids. We have no scale to compare
compressibility with.

A new nuclear state of high density is predicted for a long time, in various
conditions and from multifarious grounds, dating back from the study of
cosmic rays. In fact, it was the still undiscovered muon. This state has
never been found neither in high energy collisions nor in supernovae.

As ordinary matter in ordinary conditions is still a mystery, this research
is but an entertainment while waiting for progress in physics.

--
~~~~ clmasse on free F-country
Liberty, Equality, Profitability.