The little bang

From Little Bangs to the Big Bang

The ‘Little Bangs’ made in particle collider experiments reproduce the conditions in the Big Bang when the age of the Universe was a fraction of a second. It is thought that matter was generated, the structures in the Universe were formed and cold dark matter froze out during this very early epoch when the equation of state of the Universe was dominated by the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Future L...

Primordial hadrosynthesis in the Little Bang

The present status of soft hadron production in high energy heavy-ion collisions is summarized. In spite of strong evidence for extensive dynamical evolution and collective expansion of the fireball before freeze-out I argue that its chemical composition is hardly changed by hadronic final state interactions. The measured hadron yields thus reflect the primordial conditions at hadronization. Th...

The Little Bang ! Results from RHIC Barbara

I report rst results on Au + Au collisions at p s = 130 GeV/ per nucleon pair from all four experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The energy density achieved is well above the threshold predicted by Lattice QCD for quark decon nement. Large pressure is developed early in the collision, leading to collective asymmetric ow of the particle transverse to the beam energy and explosive ...

Sonic Boom in the Little Bang at RHIC ?

The Big Bang Model is a widely accepted theory for the origin and evolution of our universe. It postulates that ∼ 12−14 billion years ago, a hot and dense plasma of quarks and gluons (QGP) was produced a few micro seconds after the “big bang”. A pervading uniform glow of cold cosmic microwave background provides an unequivocal signature for the subsequent expansion from this hot and dense state...

Creating a Little Big Bang on Long Island