Quark-Gluon Plasma

Mk

What is Quark-Gluon Plasma? Is it mearly a concieved, observed, theorized, or even created in a lab? What are/could be its uses?

Thanks!!

chroot

A normal plasma is what you have when you provide enough energy to break atoms up into their constituent nuclei and electrons.

A quark-gluon plasma is what you get when you provide much more energy, sufficient to break up the protons and neutrons into their constituent quarks. The gluons are the force-carrying particles which hold quarks together. When you have a sea of quarks flying about, you're going to have a lot of gluons being exchanged also.

This phase of matter should exist according to theory. Experiments have shown tantalizing hints that the QGP state has been made, but no one is sure enough yet to call it a done deal.

- Warren

Gonzolo

If you strip an atom of its electrons, you are left with the nucleus, made of protons and neutrons. Protons and neutrons are each made from 3 quarks, held together by gluons. If you could manage to crush nuclei together, so that their structure is destroyed, you would be left with a soup of quarks ans gluons, or a quark-gluon plasma. Only three possibilies for its existence :

1. very early universe,
2. core of neutron (very dense) stars,
3. in a particle accelerator (lab), where you would smash nuclei together sufficiently hard that they their constituents would very briefly have no structure.

The question is more "Can we make it?" than what are its uses. I don't think that there's any hard evidence that we have created any yet, but I believe 4 labs might have the capability. To create it would confirm theories that it's a possible state of matter. A service from particle physicists to cosmologists and astrophysicists.

mattcom

Being able to create and contain quark-gluon plasma would be a whole new revolution in physics itself.
Quark-gluon plasma is a mixture of the most fundemental energy states that existed shortly after the big bang. After time the plasma cooled and formed particles. Those particles then formed the parts of an atom.
Quark-gluon plasma, if ever harnessed, would give scientists the ability to manually cool the quark-gluon plasma to exact measurements, resulting in the ability to create artificial sub-atomic particles.
In turn those artificial particles could then be arranged to form naturally existing matter like atoms, and the molecules that make what we are today.
This energy could only be contained in an alteration of space-time itself.

chroot

mattcom,

Please be careful with your answers. Quite a bit of your post is specious. Non-mainstream theories are not welcome anywhere on physicsforums.com except in the Theory Development subforum.

- Warren

marlon

mattcom has an inventive mind, but not to realistic though. The things you are stating are (up till now, at least) unreal because you are ignoring a whole lot of extra side-effects that have to be taken into account. Don't even get me started on vacuum-polarizations etc...


regards
marlon

Entropy

Don't forget the possible "quark star"!

elas

When 'Science Line' (run by volunteers from Cambridge Uni.) was up and running, I had a half-hour conversation about quarks with a graduate fresh back from six month at CERN. The essence of which is that what we are told about quarks is basically a model designed to fit the indirect observations of experimental work.
This 'intelligent guess work' method of model building, has worked well to date in that it has produced the excelent quantum (predictive) theories; but they cannot be linked directly to the experimental work (only indirectly) and therefore remain open to question.

ZapperZ

And I have talked to at least a dozen physicists (not just graduate students) working at RHIC at Brookhaven and the existence of quarks is as convincing as the existence of the electron! But then again, you might already be doubting your own existence, so this may not mean anything.

There are SO many clues and consequences to the quark model, and so many experimental verifications that this is not even funny. And we're talking QUANTITATIVE verifications, not just qualitative! Those graduate students that you talked to should be made aware of your agenda and previous postings so that they realized who they were dealing with and not be too cavelier in their off-the-cuff comments.

Zz.

elas

There are SO many clues and consequences to the quark model, and so many experimental verifications that this is not even funny. And we're talking QUANTITATIVE verifications, not just qualitative! Those graduate students that you talked to should be made aware of your agenda

The person concerned was aware of my agenda, other than that you are not saying anything different to what I have said, but you are saying it differently. I have never questioned the accuracy of QT or the existence of quarks; my 'agenda' is filling in the gaps as defined by the leading experts quoted on my webpage. Constructive criticism is not only welcomed it is desired. Please do not read into my submissions something that is not there.

ZapperZ

Pardon me, but nothing that I've said, either in this thread, or in others that you had decided to join, are remotely similar to your ideas. You offered no "constructive criticisms". When you said

you explicitly conveyed the idea that "quarks" are some wishy-washy ideas that have no valid experimental verification! That's bogus! Saying they are "indirect observations" is a cop-out, because YOU are an indirect observation too if you abide that that rule! So why pick only on quarks?

This uneven and inconsistent applications of rules and made-up criteria are the hallmark of quackeries. If you are that desperate to advertize your "theories", then do so in a peer-reviewed journal. Till then, you will understand that I do not believe you can offer any "constructive criticism".

Zz.

elas

you explicitly conveyed the idea that "quarks" are some wishy-washy ideas that have no valid experimental verification!

The concept of quarks was conceived before the particle experiments concerning their existence, were conducted; the idea was not wishy-washy but a sound attempt to explain an observerved group of measurements. The quark concept was then used to make predictions that were later found by experiment to be correct. That is to say the a new group of measurements matched those predicted by quark theory. The following two quotes sum up the method and the gaps

“Quantum physics is about ‘measurement and statistical prediction’. It does not describe the underlying structure that is the cause of quantum theory”.
"Quantum Physics, Illusion or reality” Alastair I.M. RAE of the Department of Physics at the University of Birmingham
*
"They (physicists) feel a complete explanation of the subatomic world will not have been attained until it is known why particles have the charge, masses and other particular properties they are observed to possess”.
Richard Morris in "Achilles in the Quantum Universe”

The first statement applies to all the entities of Quantum Theory, hence the validity of the second statement. There are many similar statements by other leading physicists.

ZapperZ

You have changed the whole point of my intrusion into this string. I objected to YOUR characterization in THAT particular posting of implying that the idea of quarks, TODAY, are nothing more than "indirect", and thus, unverified observations! Instead, you have managed to twist this around and turned it into a philosophy of science debate and the origin of the quark model! Do you think I am NOT aware of it?

Please go back to that posting. Do you honestly think that you have made an ACCURATE representation of our knowledge of quarks TODAY?

Zz.

"The propensity for quotation shows the lack of original thought" - Lord Peter Wimsey in one of Dorothy Sayer's novel.

Nereid

We know that 'natural accelerators' can produce high energy particles, with energies far beyond the wildest dreams of CERN folk ... so we can confidently add a fourth 'possibil[y] for its [the QG plasma] existence': UHE cosmic ray collisions, throughout the universe.

Gonzolo

Ok :

4. Ultra-high energy cosmic ray collisions.

humanino

Zz is the best. i am not working on Q&G plasma, but on "the electroweak probe" applied to the hadronic structure. Quarks are more real than I am, if you compare how many people trust my existence to how many people trust the existence of quarks.