The LHC continues to push the envelope in physics and cosmology.

 

What happens when you put Lead in the LHC and go Boom!

“A miniature Big Bang was created at the Large Hadron Collider this week as the world’s most powerful atom-smasher successfully entered a new phase of exploration.”

Creating the conditions that existed some 14 billion years ago is another new plateau for science and our understanding of our universe.

“These experiments[ attempting to find the Higgs Boson a.k.a the God Particle] were shut down last week, to allow the collider to run with lead ions — atoms from which an electron has been removed — to study different aspects of physics.

The lead ion collisions will allow the collider to create a superheated mixture of subatomic particles called quark-gluon plasma, which pervaded the Universe immediately after the Big Bang.”

“This process took place in a safe, controlled environment, generating incredibly hot and dense sub-atomic fireballs with temperatures of over ten trillion degrees.  At these temperatures even protons and neutrons, which make up the nuclei of atoms, melt resulting in a hot dense soup of quarks and gluons known as quark-gluon plasma.”

Mmmm, yummy warm quark-gluon soup.  We shall have to wait while the results are analyzed, stay tuned for further LHC updates.