Bottom Science
The very early Universe consisted of a perfect liquid, according to results from an atom-smashing experiment.
The experiment that led to this discovery is known as the ‘Alice Experiment’ conducted at CERN – The European Organization for Nuclear Research – Geneva.
ABOUT EXPERIMENT
In the experiment, two lead nuclei collided together at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.
Physicists from the ALICE detector team including researchers from the University of Birmingham have discovered that – the very early Universe was not only very hot and dense but behaved like a hot liquid.
By accelerating lead nuclei to the highest possible energies and smashing them together, the experiment generated incredibly hot and dense sub-atomic material.
This helped in reconstructing the conditions that existed in the first few microseconds after the Big Bang.
Scientists claim that these small big bangs generate temperatures of over ten trillion degrees.
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At these temperatures normal matter is expected to melt into an exotic liquid form known as quark-gluon plasma.
These first results from lead collisions have already ruled out several theoretical physics models, including ones predicting that the quark-gluon plasma produced at these energies would behave like a gas.
Quarks are the building blocks of protons and neutrons, and gluons carry the strong force that binds them together.
It is thought that these particles took some moments to condense into ordinary matter after the intense heat of the Big Bang.
According to the scientists, “These first results would seem to suggest that the Universe would have behaved like a super-hot liquid immediately after the Big Bang.”
OTHER DISCOVERIES
The team has also discovered that more sub-atomic particles are produced in these head-on collisions, as some theoretical models previously suggested.
The fireballs resulting from the collision only last a short time, but when the super-liquid cools down, the researchers can see thousands of particles radiating out from the fireball.
It is in this wreckage that they can conclude the super-liquid’s behavior.
Dr. David Evans, from the University of Birmingham’s School of Physics and Astronomy, said: “Although it is very early days we are already learning more about the early Universe.”
FUTURE STUDIES
Physicists working on the ALICE experiment will study the properties, which are still largely mysterious, of the state of matter called quark-gluon plasma.
This will help them understand more about the strong force and how it rules matter; the nature of the confinement of quarks – why quarks are confined in the matter, such as protons; and how the Strong Force generates a large amount of the mass of protons and neutrons.
DID YOU KNOW? – The ALICE Collaboration consists of around 1000 physicists and engineers from about 100 institutes in 30 countries.
