Doug,
I am currently doing work on the PHENIX experiment at Brookhaven
National Lab's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). I have read the
article and personally been asked these very questions. I am familiar
with the physics and the theory surrounding it. Just so you know, this
is same as screaming we found cold fusion in our garage - good press but
bad physics (or experiment and statistics in the cold fusion case). For
more info. than below, I encourage you to visit http://www.rhic.bnl.gov
and http://www.phenix.bnl.gov.
First, let me say that we are NOT recreating the big bang. That
is impossible. What is theorized is that the conditions that matter was
in shortly after the big bang is our goal. This state is called a
quark-gluon plasma and is a deconfined state of matter. This state of
deconfinement is predicted to exist from t = 0s to t = 10^{-6}s after
the big bang. Currently, all quarks and gluons are confined to hadrons
(i.e. protons, neutrons, etc.) but we hope to put enough energy into the
very tiny volume of matter that will be colliding at RHIC to break these
strong force bonds. The largest system we will be colliding will be Au
nuclei. So you can use the R = 1.2 fm (A)^1/3 to find the size of the
system (1 fm = 10^-15 m). It is very high density and subsequent high
temperatures in very, very small volumes for very,, very short amounts
of time. The quark-gluon plasma is predicted to live for only 10^-23 s
so we will only see the aftermath. One of which is increased strange
matter production but I will get to that below. The temperature of the
matter for the 10^-23 s will be very high. We will have in the center
of mass (or momentum) frame an energy of 100 GeV for every nucleon (2 x
197). One Kelvin is 1/40 eV, so the conversion is 1 trillion Kelvins or
1 x 10^12 K (if my math is right). This translates roughly into 2-3 GeV
per cubic fermi (fm) which we believe is roughly high enough to trigger
the "phase transition" into deconfined matter.
Now, let's make an analogy. If I raise the temperature in a
room, the molecules kick around faster and more energy states are made
available. This is the same thing happening in our collision
environment for 10^-23 sec. The result is that thermally there is more
energy available to make particles. Normally in collisions, we make
many, many of the lightest quark-antiquark pairs, called pions.
However, in a heavy ion collisions with so much more energy available we
can produce heavier quarks. The lightest quarks, up and down, make up
our protons and neutrons, but the energy density present allows for
strange quarks to become more commonly produced. This is already seen
in experiments at CERN's accelerator which carries out less energetic
collisions. These experiments see an increase in the amount of strange
matter produced. For those who know what these particles are, they see
a rise in the K+/pion+ and K-/pion- ratios (see experiments NA49 and
WA102 - I believe), and also in the number of strange baryons (cascades
- or xi's - and omega minuses). Those not familiar with these
particles, I suggest visiting the Particle Data Group's web page
(http://pdg.lbl.gov - a great web page). So far, this matter hasn't
affected the universe. As for stranglets, I am not exactly positive
because I deal with charm quark particles and their decays into
electrons and muons, but I believe it is a name for the group of
particles made strictly of strange quarks and antiquarks - no ups or
downs like the Kaons (K+, K-, ..).
Now as for the black holes, I guess you have to believe Dr.
Hawking's prediction first. I am pretty sure that we do not create a
large enough volume for a long enough period of time for this to occur.
In the press release I will include in my next message from Brookhaven
National Lab, there is a quote that goes something like this, "If the
universe was that unstable, we wouldn't be here right now".
For those interested in more, please contact offline (of the
list) at sheld@utk.edu or even the web page of the most recent
conference on this field, Quark Matter '99. It was held in Torino,
Italy in May I believe. The proceedings are currently being written up
by the participants and many (if not all), can be found at http://xxx.lanl.gov preprint server (references Quark Matter '99 or QM
'99 in the information below the title) under the nuclear theory
(nucl-th) and high energy phenomenology (hep-ph) sections. In fact,
there is paper released today, called "A Call for Last Predictions for
RHIC" in the nucl-th section. The Quark Matter '99 web page has copies
from all the talks given linked with the title, and I use it constantly
as a great reference. It is http://www.qm99.to.infn.it.
Hope that helps satisfy curiosity for now. It is bad when a
little bit knowledge causing lots of problems. Please feel free to ask
me any questions and I will try to answer them to the best of knowledge.
If not, I should be able to refer you to someone else or to a web page
to find out more.
Sam "I swear I am not trying to end the universe" Held
P.S. News releases coming in the next e-mail.
-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Craigen [mailto:dcc@ESCAPE.CA]
Sent: Friday, July 23, 1999 4:55 PM
To: PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU
Subject: Dangerous Ion Colliding Experiment?
A student approached me after class today to see if I knew about an ion
colliding experiment that was supposed to begin today but was cancelled
due to a chance of generating a tiny black hole or strange matter. Does
anybody know anything about this experiment and/or rumor?