Science is Hottttttt!!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have created the hottest temperature ever in the lab -- 4 trillion degrees Celsius -- hot enough to break matter down into the kind of soup that existed microseconds after the birth of the universe.

They used a giant atom smasher at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York to knock gold ions together to make the ultra-hot explosions -- which lasted only for milliseconds.

But that is enough to give physicists fodder for years of study that they hope will help them understand why and how the universe formed.

"That temperature is hot enough to melt protons and neutrons," Brookhaven's Steven Vigdor told a news conference at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Washington on Monday.

These particles make up atoms, but they are themselves made up of smaller components called quarks and gluons.

What the physicists are looking for are tiny irregularities that can explain why matter clumped out of the primeval hot soup.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100215/sc_nm/us_physics_temperature;_ylt=AtBEOTYTKBmlN2N8MMN9Lhms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFpcWhoaTFwBHBvcwMzNgRzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDaG90dGVzdHRlbXBl

Sometimes when I watch a show about black holes or exploding stars I wonder if it all started when some scientist on a far away planet said "Hey, let's see what this will do".

Interesting article.

robert wrote:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have created the hottest temperature ever in the lab -- 4 trillion degrees Celsius -- hot enough to break matter down into the kind of soup that existed microseconds after the birth of the universe.

They used a giant atom smasher at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York to knock gold ions together to make the ultra-hot explosions -- which lasted only for milliseconds.

But that is enough to give physicists fodder for years of study that they hope will help them understand why and how the universe formed.

"That temperature is hot enough to melt protons and neutrons," Brookhaven's Steven Vigdor told a news conference at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Washington on Monday.

These particles make up atoms, but they are themselves made up of smaller components called quarks and gluons.

What the physicists are looking for are tiny irregularities that can explain why matter clumped out of the primeval hot soup.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100215/sc_nm/us_physics_temperature;_ylt=AtBEOTYTKBmlN2N8MMN9Lhms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFpcWhoaTFwBHBvcwMzNgRzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDaG90dGVzdHRlbXBl