SCIENCE: New Finding Grazes Universe’s Mystery

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Feb 11 2000 (IPS) - Experiments conducted at various research centres in Europe have led scientists to recreate the state of matter as it was some millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the cosmic explosion which is thought to have created the universe.

The discovery, co-ordinated by the Particle Physics Laboratory at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), reduces ignorance about the physics of the universe when it was just several infinitely small fractions of a second old, occurring between the supposed huge explosion and the formation of the newly discovered state of matter.

The questions that CERN tries to solve “are basic science, targeted at finding out how the universe was created,” said Argentine physicist Gustavo Wolf, who works at the Geneva-based laboratory.

Now “we can say for certain what occurred from this millionth of a second forward,” said Wolf.

Italian scientist Luciano Manaini, CERN director, emphasised the achievements since 1994, when “a vigourous and diversified programme” began in order to produce the collision between heavy ions, in this case lead on lead.

The goal of the experiments was to prove the theories that quarks, the smallest components of matter, confined within protons and neutrons, are released at high temperatures and densities of nuclear matter.

After six years of experiments by scientists and institutes in 20 countries, the net result, declared Manaini, is that “we have been able to reach temperature intensities which are above the predicted threshhold of each state in which protons and neutrons overlap so that quarks are no longer confined.”

The released quarks, along with the gluons that linked them together, form a new state of matter, discovered using the CERN colliders, and which are thought to correspond to the matter that existed immediately after the Big Bang.

The theory maintains that, just instants after the huge explosion, the decreased temperature had already enclosed the quarks and gluons within the neutrons and protons that hold them in their current state.

Wolf explained that gluons are a kind of “messenger particle” that keeps the quarks together. The name originates from the word “glue”.

In 1964, quarks were discovered to be the smallest particles of matter. Prior to that time, it was thought that atoms simply consisted of electrons surrounding a nucleus of protons and neutrons.

In their natural state, quarks and gluons do not exist freely. But if the temperature is increased to levels 100,000 times hotter than the centre of the Sun, they are released, but are free only for an instant.

At that moment, what is known as plasma appears, “a soup of quarks and gluons” that is the equivalent of their natural state some millionths of a second after the Big Bang, explained Wolf.

The experiments are relevant for studying the first millionth of a second after the formation of the universe, after the Big Bang, which occurred some 12 to 15 billion years ago, said Manaini.

After the third millionth of a second, he explained, the temperature had decreased and the existing nuclear matter was formed.

Science attempts to get as close as possible to the moment of the Big Bang in order to uncover the mysteries of creation, said Wolf, but to reach the point of explosion requires an infinite temperature, which humans cannot achieve.

Using nuclear collisions of lead, scientists were able to create temperatures that revealed a new state of matter, the “quark soup.” The higher the density of the energy, the closer we get to the primal state of the universe, indicated the Argentine physicist.

The CERN programme is about to draw to a close, due to the fact that its greatest energy-producing capacity has been achieved and there are no immediate prospects for creating higher temperatures and densities for advancing the experiments.

Research will continue in the United States, however, at the “Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider,” which has already begun operations at the National Laboratory at Brookhaven.

CERN expects to continue its work when it has greater energy sources available, which will be provided in 2005 by the new “Large Hadron Collider.”

In the meantime, the applications of the discovery will allow the development of new technologies, as has occurred with past CERN innovations, such as the idea of the World Wide Web, which permitted the expansion of the Internet, Wolf pointed out.