Click to enlarge. The first step in creating an ion beam is to make ions, which Brookhaven scientists do using this machine, called a Tandem Van de Graaff. This computer image shows the strong magnetic field that a RHIC magnet produces. Brookhaven's RHIC homepage brookhaven The high-energy ooze that physicists believe existed in the instants after the big bang is an elusive substance. Astronomers look for clues to its properties by gazing through bigger and bigger telescopes looking back in time closer and closer to the far away edges of the universe.
Particle physicists seek it within the smallest bits of matter predicted by atomic theory.
Now researchers at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on New York's Long Island are getting ready for an experiment that will try to create in the laboratory a sort of post-bang plasma. They'll be looking for it in the aftermath of violent collisions between gold nuclei traveling in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. The successful trial prompted the Department of Energy last week to declare the facility operational. While most particle accelerators crash protons or electrons together to see what happens, scientists at the Brookhaven collider have chosen to annihilate much heavier lumps of substance. Protons are the positively-charged building blocks of atomic nuclei, while electrons are the negatively charged particles that swirl around them.