When matter melts
Thursday, June 23, 2011 - 15:31
in Physics & Chemistry
For a few millionths of a second after the big bang, quarks could move freely, but soon normal matter "froze out" of this quark-matter soup. For the first time scientists have compared quantum theory calculations and data from the STAR experiment at Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider to map out the energies and temperatures where ordinary matter melts and the quark-gluon plasma freezes.