![]() | | SSURF Member Spotlight: RHIC |
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Relativistic Heavy Ion ColliderThe world's top facility for exploring the building blocks of visible matter and unlocking the secrets of proton spin is taking us back to the beginning. |
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| | Ten years in the making, the new sPHENIX detector and upgrades to RHIC's STAR detector enable unprecedented precision tracking gold atom nucleus collisions at high speeds. This advancement allows for in-depth study of quark-gluon plasma, providing critical insights into the fundamental behavior of matter and the early universe's composition. The research aims to replicate conditions shortly after the Big Bang, revealing information about the fundamental building blocks of matter and their interactions. |
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| | Read more about it in Scientific American |
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| ![]() | | Watch the sPHENIX installation in this video of the radical transformation. It includes many new components that significantly enhance scientists’ ability to learn about quark-gluon plasma (QGP), an exotic form of nuclear matter created in RHIC’s energetic particle smashups. | ![]() |
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![]() | 5 Fun Facts About RHIC - More than 1,000 users from around the globe rely on RHIC to complete their experiments every year.
- The double storage ring is hexagonally shaped and has a 2.4 mile circumference in which stored particles are deflected and focused by 1,740 superconducting magnets.
- In 2010, RHIC scientists concluded that temperatures in excess of 7 trillion degrees Fahrenheit had been achieved in gold ion collisions, and that these collision temperatures resulted in the breakdown of "normal matter" and the creation of quark-gluon plasma. It is described as a recreation of the conditions that existed during the birth of the universe!
- The novel Cosm by Gregory Benford takes place at RHIC. The main character, a physicist at the BRAHMS experiment, creates a new universe by accident while colliding uranium ions.
- RHIC’s collisions of polarized protons reveal that gluons, the gluelike particles that hold the building blocks of matter together, contribute to a proton’s “spin.” This property makes MRI scans possible, but is still not fully understood.
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![1,200-ton detector at RHIC]() | | Meet STAR, a colossal 1,200-ton detector at RHIC, tracking thousands of particles spawned by ion collisions—essentially a house-sized technological marvel! Its mission? Unveiling the universe's secrets by hunting down the elusive quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Picture a journey back to the cosmic birth, just moments after the Big Bang kickstarted the celestial dance of symmetries and asymmetries—this is the QGP realm. STAR, a crucial piece in deciphering this grand puzzle, paints a new cosmic narrative, redefining our understanding of the universe's early days. |
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RHIC is revolutionizing quark-gluon plasma physics and will also form the foundation for a brand-new Electron-Ion Collider—a groundbreaking creation set to be the world's sole electron-nucleus collider.
This one-of-a-kind facility will open a new frontier in the exploration of the substructure of the world around us. This isn't just a leap; it's an exploration of the unseen substructure of the cosmos. The EIC design will make use of existing ion sources, a pre-accelerator chain, a superconducting magnet ion storage ring, and other infrastructure of RHIC. A new electron source and electron accelerator and storage rings will be added inside the existing collider tunnel so that collisions can take place at points where the stored ion and electron beams cross. Experiments at the EIC will unlock the secrets of the strongest force in nature, potentially paving the way for the technologies of tomorrow. |
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