Scientists recreating early universe quark-gluon plasma in giant particle accelerators
(Phys.org) —In the first few microseconds after the big bang, the universe was a superhot, superdense primordial soup of "quarks" and "gluons," particles of matter and carriers of force respectively. This quark-gluon plasma cooled almost instantly but it's brief existence set the stage for the universe we know today. To better understand how our universe evolved, scientists are re-creating a quark-gluon plasma in giant particle accelerators such as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), where an elaborate experiment called "STAR," for Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC, has been collecting and analyzing data for the past decade. The STAR experiment is now poised for a major upgrade with the introduction of a new particle detector system, called the "Heavy Flavor Tracker," that is the most advanced of its kind in the world.