At One Trillion Degrees, Even Gold Turns Into the Sloshiest Liquid

April 20, 2005 | Source: New York Times

Scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island have produced a state of matter that flows better than water at about a trillion degrees instead of turning into a gas, as expected.

The scientists stopped short of announcing that they had created a subatomic soup known as quark-gluon plasma. Physicists are interested in quark-gluon plasma because it will help them understand the “strong force” that holds protons and neutrons together.

The experiment also recreates the state of matter that filled the universe for up to the first ten-thousandth of a second after the Big Bang.