CERN produces mini big bangs
NOV 09, 2010
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.024815
New Scientist : The Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland produced a flurry of “mini big bangs” on 7 November. Instead of the usual protonâproton collisions, the LHC started smashing lead ions, which produced dense fireballs with temperatures of about 10 trillion kelvin. At those temperatures, the atoms’ nuclei melt and become a quarkâgluon plasma. The resultant plasma fireballs will allow physicists using the ALICE detector at CERN to study the universe as it was about a millionth of a second after the Big Bang.
© 2010 American Institute of Physics
