New Matter Discovered

I forgot to catch "Eye for a Guy 2" (EFAG2) last night, partly cos I was outside and reached home only just before the show started. Anyway, since we are on the topic of EFAG2, I read something about Denise Keller that could prove an interesting matter to someone we know. It was in yesterday's Today report that Denise likes guys with a sense of humor and likes cats! Yeah, so if the guy is a giant cat who has a (lame) sense of humor, he'd probably be her dream guy *hint*.

Another interesting thing that occured last night was that I saw Jeanette Aw up close (but unfortunately not personal) at Taka. In case you are wondering, I was there to meet a friend (Dexter for those who know him), but back to the Jeanette. It was actually by a stroke of luck that I saw her cos we were just riding the escalator up when we suddenly realised that the pretty lady in a pink T-shirt and jeans standing a few steps in front, chatting with her friend to her side and behind her, was Jeanette. Too bad I didn't get a good look, though overall, I think she looks as pretty as she does on TV (if not prettier), and she seemed slimmer and was actually taller than I expected.

Ok, I know, I digress. So on to today's article. Researchers at the Brookhaven National Laboratory have produced a new state of matter, what they call quark-gluon plasma (it's really amazing how they come up with these names). This state of matter, they claim, is the state at which all matter would look like possibly for a brief period after the "big-bang" creation of the Universe. Quarks and Gluons have been facinating scientists for quite a while as they basically make up all matter by being the constituent matter for protons and neutrons.

The quark-gluon plasma was created in the relatively new Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (another big name) aka atom smasher, by smashing two gold ions together at speeds very close to the speed of light. This new state is important as it will help scientists understand the forces that hold protons and neutrons together, which is a key area in nuclear physics. What's interesting is that the accumulated experiments done by scientists have shown that quarks and gluons, when liberated, are more work together in a more liquid-like manner than individualistic gas-like manner, which is different from what happens when atoms are broken up.

I don't really know what is the practical use of such knowledge. But I guess its always good to know more about what makes up matter’s structure, and who knows, we might find something good.

WASHINGTON: A team of researchers at the Brookhaven National Laboratory has produced a new state of matter - they call it quark-gluon plasma - which is a hot and dense liquid made of basic atomic particles.

The scientists claim in the early universe, possibly for a brief period after the "big-bang" creation of the universe, all matter would have looked like quark-gluon plasma.

"We have a new state of matter," announced Sam Aronson, associate laboratory director for High Energy and Nuclear Physics at the Laboratory. "We think we are looking at a phenomenon ... in the universe 13 billion years ago when free quarks and gluons ... cooled down to the particles that we know today," he added.

Click here for the full article.