Big Bang = Big Flow (RHIC Results)

[Phobos]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/04/18/liquid.surprise.ap/index.html

New results from a particle collider suggest that the universe behaved like a liquid in its earliest moments, not the fiery gas that was thought to have pervaded the first microseconds of existence.

 

[marcus]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/04/18/liquid.surprise.ap/index.html

this could provide ways to test the LQG picture of conditions around the classical BH singularity (what Ashtekar calls the 'quantum regime' that replaces the singularity when the model is quantized)
very exciting. thanks for the link.

here is a supplemental link which has animated graphics showing the liquid-like behavior

http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=05-38

this also has links to peer-reviewed papers from BNL physicists

for example this technical paper
http://arxiv.org/abs/nucl-ex/0501009
talks about:

" (1) initial energy densities above the critical values predicted by lattice QCD for establishment of a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP);

(2) nearly ideal fluid flow, marked by constituent interactions of very short mean free path, established most probably at a stage preceding hadron formation;..."

 

[misskitty]

That is awesome. Interesting to think the universe behaved like a liquid. I wonder why it did that. I wonder if we still see the universe behave in this manner to a degree.

 

[owl3951]

Oddly enough, this is what the Qu'ran says happened. Genesis, too, sort of...(Note: I am NOT being a proponent of anything in this post, I am just struck by the parallel.)

 

[hellfire]

That is awesome. Interesting to think the universe behaved like a liquid. I wonder why it did that. I wonder if we still see the universe behave in this manner to a degree.

I think they mean perfect fluid, which is a fluid without viscosity and no heat conduction, or, equivalently, isotropic in its rest frame. As far as I know, the reasons for that in the primitive universe were a missing preferred direction in space and a causal contact. I wonder why did this plasma behave in that way.

 

[selfAdjoint]

It's important to note that these experimental results are only said to correspond to the early state of the universe. In fact, this "new state of matter" has been achieved by colliding gold nuclei in an accelerator. While they have a good reason to call this state pre-hadron, that doesn't mean it is necessarialy the same as the pre-hadron state of the early universe.