Brookhaven National Laboratory physicists find clues to early universe matter

Physicists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York have identified unexpected patterns in particle collisions that may reveal the state of matter in the early universe. Using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the STAR detector, researchers analyzed approximately one billion gold nucleus collisions.

The data shows a significant dip in measurements, which researchers interpret as evidence of the ‘critical point’ of nuclear matter. This point represents the specific conditions under which normal nuclear matter, such as protons and neutrons, transforms into a quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Understanding this transition is essential to explaining how the universe evolved from a hot soup of quarks and gluons into the matter that constitutes the modern cosmos.