The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Some of the superconducting magnets were manufactured by Northrop Grumman Corp. at Bethpage, New York. Note especially the second, independent ring behind the blue striped one. Barely visible and between the white and red pipes on the left wall, is the orange Crash Cord, which should be used to stop the beam in the case a person is still left in the tunnel.^[1]

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC, pronounced like "rick", IPA: [ˈɹɪk]) is a heavy-ion collider located at and operated by Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, New York.^[2] By using RHIC to collide ions traveling at relativistic speeds, physicists study the primordial form of matter that existed in the universe shortly after the Big Bang,^[3] and also the structure of protons. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... The Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) is an aerospace and defense conglomerate that is the result of a 1994 merger between Northrop and Grumman. ... This article or section needs additional references or sources. ... Rick may refer to: A shortened version of a given name such as Richard, Eric, Frederick, Derrick, Ulrich or Patrick. It may also be formal or full name on its own. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... An electrostatic potential map of the nitrate ion (NO3−). Areas coloured red are lower in energy than areas colored yellow An ion is an atom or group of atoms which have lost or gained one or more electrons, making them negatively or positively charged. ... A collider is a type of a particle accelerator with two opposite beams of the particles. ... ≠ Aerial view of Brookhaven National Laboratory. ... Upton, New York is part of the Long Island town of Brookhaven. ... An electrostatic potential map of the nitrate ion (NO3−). Areas coloured red are lower in energy than areas colored yellow An ion is an atom or group of atoms which have lost or gained one or more electrons, making them negatively or positively charged. ... The special theory of relativity was proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein in his article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. Some three centuries earlier, Galileos principle of relativity had stated that all uniform motion was relative, and that there was no absolute and well-defined state of rest... A QGP is formed at the collision point of two relativistically accelerated gold ions in the center of the STAR detector at the relativistic heavy ion collider at the Brookhaven national laboratory. ... The Universe is defined as the summation of all particles and energy that exist and the space-time in which all events occur. ... According to the Big Bang model, the universe emerged from an extremely dense and hot state. ... In physics, the proton (Greek proton = first) is a subatomic particle with an electric charge of one positive fundamental unit (1. ...

At present, RHIC is the most powerful heavy-ion collider in the world. It is also distinctive in its capability to collide spin-polarized protons. In physics, spin refers to the angular momentum intrinsic to a body, as opposed to orbital angular momentum, which is the motion of its center of mass about an external point. ... In physics, the proton (Greek proton = first) is a subatomic particle with an electric charge of one positive fundamental unit (1. ...

The accelerator

RHIC is an intersecting storage ring (ISR) particle accelerator. Two independent rings (arbitrarily denoted as "blue" and "yellow" rings, see also the photograph) allow a virtually free choice of colliding projectiles. The RHIC double storage ring is itself hexagonally shaped and 3834 m long in circumference, with curved edges in which stored particles are deflected by 1,740 superconducting niobium titanium magnets. The six interaction points are at the middle of the six relatively straight sections, where the two rings cross, allowing the particles to collide. The interaction points are enumerated by clock positions, with the injection point at 6 o'clock. Two interaction points are unused and left for further expansion (refer also to the RHIC Complex diagram). The ISR (Intersecting Storage Rings) was a particle accelerator at CERN. It was the worlds first hadron collider, and ran from 1971 to 1984, with a maximum center of mass energy of 62 GeV. From its initial startup, the collider itself had the capability to produce particles like the... CERN logo The Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire (English: European Organization for Nuclear Research), commonly known as CERN, pronounced (or in French), is the worlds largest particle physics laboratory, situated just northwest of Geneva on the border between France and Switzerland. ... Year 1971 (MCMLXXI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the 1971 Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link displays the 1984 Gregorian calendar). ... The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) is a particle accelerator at CERN. Originally specified as a 300 GeV machine, the SPS was actually built to be capable of 400GeV, an operating energy it achieved on the official commissioning date of 17 June 1976. ... CERN logo The Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire (English: European Organization for Nuclear Research), commonly known as CERN, pronounced (or in French), is the worlds largest particle physics laboratory, situated just northwest of Geneva on the border between France and Switzerland. ... Year 1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link displays the 1981 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link displays the 1984 Gregorian calendar). ... Isabelle may refer to: The French version of the name Isabel The Isabelle theorem prover ISABELLE, a cancelled particle accelerator project A Japanese rock group featuring Aya from Psycho le Cemu on guitar Categories: | ... ≠ Aerial view of Brookhaven National Laboratory. ... Year 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays the 1983 Gregorian calendar). ... Tevatron is a circular particle accelerator (or synchrotron) at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. ... Aerial view of the Fermilab site. ... Year 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link displays 1987 Gregorian calendar). ... 2009 (MMIX) will be a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... ≠ Aerial view of Brookhaven National Laboratory. ... 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) was a ring particle accelerator which was planned to be built in the area around Waxahachie, TX. It was planned to have a ring circumference of 87 km (54 miles) and an energy of 20 TeV per beam, potentially enough energy to create a Higgs... Year 1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1993 Gregorian calendar). ... The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle accelerator and collider located at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland (). Currently under construction, the LHC is scheduled to begin operation in May 2008. ... CERN logo The Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire (English: European Organization for Nuclear Research), commonly known as CERN, pronounced (or in French), is the worlds largest particle physics laboratory, situated just northwest of Geneva on the border between France and Switzerland. ... 2008 (MMVIII) will be a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The 2020s is the 3rd decade of the 21st century of the Anno Domini (common) era. ... In particle physics, Very Large Hadron Collider (VLHC) is the usual name for a hypothetical future hadron collider with performance significantly beyond the Large Hadron Collider. ... The 21st century is the present century of the Anno Domini (common) era, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. ... A small storage ring at SLAC. This particlular storage ring is one of the two small storage rings or circular cyclotron. ... For the DC Comics Superhero also called Atom Smasher, see Albert Rothstein. ... A projectile is any object sent through space by the application of a force. ... A regular hexagon. ... The metre or meter is a measure of length. ... Superconductivity is a phenomenon occurring in certain materials at low temperatures, characterised by the complete absence of electrical resistance and the damping of the interior magnetic field (the Meissner effect. ... General Name, Symbol, Number niobium, Nb, 41 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 5, 5, d Appearance gray metallic Standard atomic weight 92. ... General Name, Symbol, Number titanium, Ti, 22 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 4, 4, d Appearance silvery metallic Standard atomic weight 47. ... Iron filings in a magnetic field generated by a bar magnet A magnet is material or object that produces a magnetic field. ...

Sitting on the 8 o'clock interaction point is the PHENIX detector. Visible is the green painted superconducting magnets in the interaction region (IR), with the beam pipe in its center. To the right is in an extracted position, the East Carriage with the ring imaging Cherenkov detector (RICH).

A particle passes through several stages of boosters before it reaches the RHIC storage ring. The first stage for ions is the Tandem Van de Graaff accelerator, while for protons, the 200 MeV linear accelerator (Linac) is used. As an example, gold nuclei leaving the Tandem Van de Graaff have an energy of about 1 MeV per nucleon and have an electric charge Q = +32 (32 electrons stripped from the gold atom). The particles are then accelerated by the Booster Synchrotron to 95 MeV per nucleon, which injects the projectile now with Q = +77 into the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS), before they finally reach 8.86 GeV per nucleon and are injected in a Q = +79 state (no electrons left) into the RHIC storage ring over the AGS-To-RHIC Transfer Line (ATR), sitting at the 6 o'clock position. Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 452 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (2910 × 3860 pixel, file size: 3. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 452 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (2910 × 3860 pixel, file size: 3. ... Superconductivity is a phenomenon occurring in certain materials at low temperatures, characterised by the complete absence of electrical resistance and the damping of the interior magnetic field (the Meissner effect. ... Iron filings in a magnetic field generated by a bar magnet A magnet is material or object that produces a magnetic field. ... A Ring Imaging Cherenkov detector (RICH detector) is a particle detector that can determine the velocity, , of a fundamental particle. ... A booster may mean: a booster dose in medicine, refers to a vaccination given after a previous vaccination. ... Look up Tandem in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Robert Jemison Van de Graaff, (December 20, 1901 -- January 16, 1967) was an American physicist and instrument maker, professor of physics at Princeton University. ... In physics, the proton (Greek proton = first) is a subatomic particle with an electric charge of one positive fundamental unit (1. ... An electronvolt (symbol: eV) is the amount of energy gained by a single unbound electron when it falls through an electrostatic potential difference of one volt. ... A Linear particle accelerator is an electrical device for the acceleration of subatomic particles. ... e- redirects here. ... Properties In chemistry and physics, an atom (Greek ἄτομος or átomos meaning indivisible) is the smallest particle still characterizing a chemical element. ... Synchrotrons are now mostly used for producing monochromatic high intensity X-ray beams; here, the synchrotron is the circular track, off which the beamlines branch. ... The Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) is a particle accelerator-collider complex located at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York, USA. The work performed at the accelerator lead to three Nobel Prizes: 1976: Samuel C. C. Ting discovered the J part of the J/ψ and the charm quark. ...

The main types of particle combinations used at RHIC are p + p, d + Au, Cu + Cu and Au + Au. The projectiles typically travel at a speed of 99.995% of the speed of light in vacuum. For Au + Au collision, the center-of-mass energy is typically 200 GeV (or 100 GeV per nucleon); a luminosity of 2 × 10²⁶ cm^-2 s^-1 was targeted during the planning. The current luminosity performance of the collider is 2.96 × 10²⁶ cm^-2 s^-1 (Run-4/PHENIX). A center-of-mass energy of 400 GeV was briefly achieved during Run-5, colliding protons. In physics, the proton (Greek proton = first) is a subatomic particle with an electric charge of one positive fundamental unit (1. ... In physics, the proton (Greek proton = first) is a subatomic particle with an electric charge of one positive fundamental unit (1. ... Deuterium, also called heavy hydrogen, is a stable isotope of hydrogen with a natural abundance in the oceans of Earth of approximately one atom in 6500 of hydrogen (~154 PPM). ... GOLD refers to one of the following: GOLD (IEEE) is an IEEE program designed to garner more student members at the university level (Graduates of the Last Decade). ... General Name, Symbol, Number copper, Cu, 29 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11, 4, d Appearance metallic pinkish red Standard atomic weight 63. ... General Name, Symbol, Number copper, Cu, 29 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11, 4, d Appearance metallic pinkish red Standard atomic weight 63. ... GOLD refers to one of the following: GOLD (IEEE) is an IEEE program designed to garner more student members at the university level (Graduates of the Last Decade). ... GOLD refers to one of the following: GOLD (IEEE) is an IEEE program designed to garner more student members at the university level (Graduates of the Last Decade). ... A percentage is a way of expressing a proportion, a ratio or a fraction as a whole number, by using 100 as the denominator. ... A line showing the speed of light on a scale model of Earth and the Moon The speed of light in a vacuum is an important physical constant denoted by the letter c for constant or the Latin word celeritas meaning swiftness.[1] It is the speed of all electromagnetic... Look up Vacuum in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In physics, the center of mass of a system of particles is a specific point at which, for many purposes, the systems mass behaves as if it were concentrated. ... An electronvolt (symbol: eV) is the amount of energy gained by a single unbound electron when it falls through an electrostatic potential difference of one volt. ... In physics a nucleon is a collective name for two baryons: the neutron and the proton. ... Luminosity has different meanings in several different fields of science. ... A centimetre (American spelling centimeter, symbol cm) is a unit of length that is equal to one hundredth of a metre, the current SI base unit of length. ... Look up second in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

One unique characteristic of RHIC is its capability to produce polarized protons. RHIC holds the record of highest energy polarized protons. Polarized protons are injected into RHIC and preserving this state throughout the energy ramp is difficult task that can only be accomplished with the aid of Siberian Snakes (a chain of solenoids and quadrupoles for aligning particles^[4]) and AC dipoles. The AC dipoles have been also used in non-linear machine diagnostics for the first time in RHIC.^[5]

The experiments

First gold ion beam-beam collisions at a momentum of 100 + 100 GeV/c per nucleon on STAR showing hadronized charged particle debris curving in the magnetic field of the instrument.

There are four detectors at RHIC: STAR (6 o'clock, and near the ATR), PHENIX (8 o'clock, pronounced like "phoenix", IPA /ˈfiːnɪks/), PHOBOS (10 o'clock), and BRAHMS (2 o'clock).^[1] Three of them are still active, with PHOBOS having completed its operation after 2005 and run-5. Download high resolution version (1226x946, 452 KB)First Gold Beam-Beam Collision Events at RHIC at 100 - 100 GeV/c per beam recorded by the STAR detector. ... Download high resolution version (1226x946, 452 KB)First Gold Beam-Beam Collision Events at RHIC at 100 - 100 GeV/c per beam recorded by the STAR detector. ... In classical mechanics, momentum (pl. ... In particle physics, hadronization is the process of the formation of hadrons out of quarks and gluons. ... A detector is a device that detects or measures some phenomenon or stimulus, and produces some signal in response. ... The phoenix from the Aberdeen Bestiary. ... Phobos was a heavy ion collision experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratorys RHIC collider. ...

Among the two larger detectors, STAR is aimed at the detection of hadrons with its system of time projection chambers covering a large solid angle and in a conventionally generated solenoidal magnetic field, while PHENIX is further specialized in detecting rare and electromagnetic particles, using a partial coverage detector system in a superconductively generated axial magnetic field. The smaller detectors have larger pseudorapidity coverage, PHOBOS has the largest pseudorapidity coverage of all detectors, and tailored for bulk particle multiplicity measurement, while BRAHMS is designed for momentum spectroscopy, in order to study the so called "small-x" and saturation physics. There is an additional experiment PP2PP, investigating spin dependence in p + p scattering. In physics, a time projection chamber is a particle detector consisting of a gas-filled cylindrical chamber with multiwire proportional chambers (MWPC) as endplates. ... A solid angle is the three dimensional analog of the ordinary angle. ... Magnetic field lines shown by iron filings In physics, a magnetic field is a solenoidal vector field in the space surrounding moving electric charges, such as those in electric currents and bar magnets. ... Phenix is a small-scale (250 MW) prototype fast breeder reactor in France. ... In experimental particle physics, Pseudorapidity, , is a commonly used spatial coordinate describing the angle of a particle relative to the beam axis. ... In physics, spin refers to the angular momentum intrinsic to a body, as opposed to orbital angular momentum, which is the motion of its center of mass about an external point. ... Scattering is a general physical process whereby some forms of radiation, such as light, sound or moving particles, for example, are forced to deviate from a straight trajectory by one or more localized non-uniformities in the medium through which it passes. ...

The spokespersons for each of the experiments are: A spokesperson (person could be replaced with the gender of the person), or spokesmodel is a person who speaks on behalf of others, but is understood not to be necessarily part of the others (e. ...

• STAR: Timothy Hallman (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Physics Department)
• PHENIX: Barbara Jacak (Stony Brook University, Department of Physics and Astronomy)
• PHOBOS: Wit Busza (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Physics and MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science)
• BRAHMS: Flemming Videbaek (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Physics Department)
• PP2PP: Włodek Guryn (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Physics Department)

≠ Aerial view of Brookhaven National Laboratory. ... Stony Brook University The State University of New York at Stony Brook (SUNYSB), or Stony Brook University (SBU) (a marketing ploy used to woo students [1] ), located in Stony Brook, New York, USA, is a public research university in the United States, is a public research university located in Stony... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... ≠ Aerial view of Brookhaven National Laboratory. ... ≠ Aerial view of Brookhaven National Laboratory. ...

Current results

For a complementary discussion, see also quark-gluon plasma. A QGP is formed at the collision point of two relativistically accelerated gold ions in the center of the STAR detector at the relativistic heavy ion collider at the Brookhaven national laboratory. ...

For the experimental objective of creating and studying the quark-gluon plasma, RHIC has the unique ability to provide baseline measurements for itself. This consists of the both lower energy and also lower mass number projectile combinations that do not result in the density of 200 GeV Au + Au collisions, like the p + p and d + Au collisions of the earlier runs, and also Cu + Cu collisions in Run-5. The mass number (A), also called atomic mass number or nucleon number, is the number of nucleons (protons and neutrons) in an atomic nucleus. ...

Using this approach, important results of the measurement of the hot QCD matter created at RHIC are:^[6]

• Collective anisotropy, or elliptic flow. The multiplicity of the particles' bulk with lower momenta exhibits a dependency as (p_T is the transverse momentum, φ angle with the reaction plane). This is a direct result of the elliptic shape of the nucleus overlap region during the collision and hydrodynamical property of the matter created.

• Jet quenching. In the heavy ion collision event, scattering with a high transverse p_T can serve as a probe for the hot QCD matter, as it loses its energy while traveling through the medium. Experimentally, the quantity R_AA (A is the mass number) being the quotient of observed jet yield in A + A collisions and N_bin × yield in p + p collisions shows a strong damping with increasing A, which is an indication of the new properties of the hot QCD matter created.

• Color glass condensate saturation. The Balitsky-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov (BFKL) dynamics^[7] which are the result of a resummation of large logarithmic terms in Q² for deep inelastic scattering with small Bjorken-x, saturate at a unitarity limit , with N_part/2 being the number of participant nucleons in a collision (as opposed to the number of binary collisions). The observed charged multiplicity follows the expected dependency of , supporting the predictions of the color glass condensate model. For a detailed discussion, see e.g. Kharzeev et al.;^[8] for an overview of color glass condensates, see e.g. Iancu & Venugopalan.^[9]

• Particle ratios. The particle ratios predicted by statistical models allow the calculation of parameters such as the temperature at chemical freeze-out T_ch and hadron chemical potential μ_B. The experimental value T_ch varies a bit with the model used, with most authors giving a value of 160 MeV < T_ch < 180 MeV, which is very close to the expected QCD phase transition value of approximately 170 MeV obtained by lattice QCD calculations (see e.g. Karsch^[10]).

While in the first years, theorists are eager to claim that RHIC has discovered the quark-gluon plasma (e.g. Gyulassy & McLarren^[11]), though the experimental groups were more careful not to jump to conclusions, citing various variables still in need of further measurement.^[12] The present results shows that the matter created is a fluid with a viscosity near the quantum limit, but is unlike a weakly interacting plasma (a widespread yet not quantitatively unfounded belief on how quark gluon plasma looks). In mathematics, the multiplicity of a member of a multiset is how many memberships in the multiset it has. ... Bulk can refer to: Bulk mail Bulk Purchasing Bulk liquids Bulk material handling Bulk and Skull, a pair of characters in the Power Rangers universe. ... In classical mechanics, momentum (pl. ... Hydrodynamics is fluid dynamics applied to liquids, such as water, alcohol, oil, and blood. ... A jet is a narrow cone of hadrons and other particles produced by the hadronization of a quark or gluon in a particle physics or heavy ion experiment. ... Color Glass Condendate: a state of matter created in the forward rapidity region of a high-energy heavy ion collision. ... In chemistry, saturation has four different meanings: In physical chemistry, saturation is the point at which a solution of a substance can dissolve no more of that substance and additional amounts of that substance will appear as a precipitate. ...

A recent overview of the physics result is e.g. provided by the RHIC Experimental Evaluations 2004, a community-wide effort of RHIC experiments to evaluate the current data in the context of implication for formation of a new state of matter.^[13] These results are from the first three years of data collection at RHIC.

The future

RHIC began operation in 2000 and is currently the most powerful heavy-ion collider in the world. It is expected, however, that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of CERN will provide significantly higher energies once completed, essentially superseding RHIC. 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle accelerator and collider located at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland (). Currently under construction, the LHC is scheduled to begin operation in May 2008. ... CERN logo The Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire (English: European Organization for Nuclear Research), commonly known as CERN, pronounced (or in French), is the worlds largest particle physics laboratory, situated just northwest of Geneva on the border between France and Switzerland. ...

However, RHIC will likely remain unique in various fields that the LHC in the present state will not be able to cover. Unlike RHIC, LHC is unable to accelerate spin polarized protons, which would leave RHIC remaining as the world's highest energy accelerator for studying spin-polarized proton structure. And ALICE, the dedicated heavy ion detector at LHC, unlike STAR and PHENIX, lacks a calorimeter for jet tomographic studies. As a result, heavy ion studies with the hadronic detectors of LHC has been proposed,^[14] also a calorimeter upgrade with partial angular coverage has been proposed for ALICE.^[15] ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is one of the five detector experiments (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, TOTEM, and LHCb) being constructed at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It is optimized to study heavy ion collisions. ... A calorimeter is a device used for calorimetry, the science of measuring the heat of chemical reactions or physical changes as well as heat capacity. ...

Two planned upgrades should enhance the future scientific output of RHIC in these areas:

• RHIC-II: An upgrade that will increase the luminosity by a further factor of 10, together with upgrades to the detectors STAR and PHENIX.
• eRHIC: Construction of a 10 GeV high intensity electron/positron beam facility, allowing electron-ion collisions. At least one new detector will have to be built to study the collisions. A recent review is given by A. Deshpande et al..^[16]

In October 2006, the Interim Director of BNL, Sam Aronson has contested the claim in a Physics Today report that "Tevatron is unlikely to outlive the decade. Neither is ... the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider", referring to a report of the National Research Council.^[17] For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... Physics Today magazine, created in 1948, is the flagship publication of The American Institute of Physics. ... Tevatron is a circular particle accelerator (or synchrotron) at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. ... The National Research Council (NRC) of the USA is the working arm of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the United States National Academy of Engineering, carrying out most of the studies done in their names. ...

Fears among the public

Before RHIC started operation, there were fears among the public that the extremely high energy could produce one of the following catastrophic scenarios:

• RHIC creates a black hole
• RHIC creates a transition into a different quantum mechanical vacuum (see false vacuum)
• RHIC creates strange matter that is more stable than ordinary matter

These (extremely) hypothetical theories are complex, but they predict that at least the Earth would be destroyed within seconds. However, the fact that objects of the Solar System (e.g. the Moon) have been bombarded with cosmic particles of significantly higher energies than that of RHIC for billions of years, without any harm to the Solar System, were among the most striking arguments that these hypotheses were unfounded.^[18] Simulated view of a black hole in front of the Milky Way. ... In telecommunication, a transition is the change from one signal state to another signal state. ... Fig. ... Look up Vacuum in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A false vacuum is a metastable sector of a quantum field theory which appears to be a perturbative vacuum but is unstable to instanton effects which tunnel to a lower energy state. ... Strange matter is a particular form of quark matter, namely a liquid of up, down, and strange quarks. ... Matter is the substance of which physical objects are composed. ... This article is about Earth as a planet. ... Apparent magnitude: up to -12. ... Cosmic rays can loosely be defined as energetic particles originating outside of the Earth. ...

The other main controversial issue was a demand by critics for physicists to show an exactly zero probability for such a catastrophic scenario, something physics cannot provide. However, using the same experimental and astrophysical constraints, physicists are also unable to demonstrate a zero probability that tomorrow Earth will be struck with a "doomsday" cosmic ray (they can only calculate an upper limit for the likelihood). The result would be the same destructive scenarios described above, although obviously not caused by humans. According to this argument of upper limits, RHIC would still modify the chance for the Earth's survival by an extremely marginal amount. Articles with similar titles include physician, a person who practices medicine. ... Probability is the chance that something is likely to happen or be the case. ... Spiral Galaxy ESO 269-57 Astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties (luminosity, density, temperature, and chemical composition) of celestial objects such as stars, galaxies, and the interstellar medium, as well as their interactions. ... Look up doomsday in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Cosmic rays can loosely be defined as energetic particles originating outside of the Earth. ...

The debate started in 1999 with an exchange of letters in Scientific American between W. L. Wagner, and F. Wilczek, Institute for Advanced Study, in response to a previous article by M. Mukerjee.^[19] The media attention unfolded with an article in U.K. Sunday Times of July 18, 1999 by J. Leake,^[20] closely followed by articles in the U.S. media.^[21] The controversy mostly ended with the report of a committee convened by the director of Brookhaven National Laboratory, J. H. Marburger, ruling out the catastrophic scenarios depicted.^[18] W. L. Wagner tried subsequently — as he had attempted with various accelerators before — to stop full energy collision at RHIC by filing Federal lawsuits in San Francisco and New York, but without success.^[22] Year 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1999 Gregorian calendar). ... Scientific American is a popular-science magazine, published (first weekly and later monthly) since August 28, 1845, making it the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. ... Frank Wilczek (born May 15, 1951) is a Nobel prize winning American physicist. ... Fuld Hall The Institute for Advanced Study is a private institution in Princeton Township, New Jersey, U.S.A., designed to foster pure cutting-edge research by scientists and scholars in a variety of fields without the complications of teaching or funding, or the agendas of sponsorship. ... Motto  2(French) God and my right Anthem God Save the Queen 3 United Kingdom() – on the European continent() – in the European Union() Capital London Largest conurbation (population) Greater London Urban Area Official languages English (de facto)4 Government  -  Monarch Queen Elizabeth II  -  Prime Minister Gordon Brown Formation  -  Acts of... The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper distributed in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International which is in turn owned by News Corporation. ... is the 199th day of the year (200th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1999 Gregorian calendar). ... A committee is a (relatively) small group that can serve one of several functions: Governance: in organizations too large for all the members to participate in decisions affecting the organization as a whole, a committee (such as a Board of Directors) is given the power to make decisions. ... In relation to a company, a director is an officer (that is, someone who works for the company) charged with the conduct and management of its affairs. ... Dr John H. Marburger, III is the science advisor to George W. Bush and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. ... This article describes the government of the United States. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... NY redirects here. ...

On March 17, 2005, the BBC published an article^[23] implying that researcher Horaţiu Năstase believes black holes have been created at RHIC. However, the original papers of H. Năstase^[24] and the New Scientist article^[25] cited by the BBC state that the correspondence of the hot dense QCD matter created in RHIC to a black hole is only in the sense of a correspondence of QCD scattering in Minkowski space and scattering in the AdS₅ × X₅ space in AdS/CFT; in other words, similar mathematically. RHIC collisions therefore might be useful to study quantum gravity behavior within AdS/CFT, but the described physical phenomena are not the same. is the 76th day of the year (77th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The British Broadcasting Corporation, which is usually known as the BBC, is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world in terms of audience numbers, employing 26,000 staff in the United Kingdom alone and with a budget of more than GB£4 billion. ... HoraÅ£iu Năstase is a Romanian physicist and professor in the High energy physics group at Brown University in Providence, RI, USA. He was born in Bucharest, Romania and finished high school at the Nicolae Bălcescu High School (now Saint Sava National College). ... New Scientist is a weekly international science magazine covering recent developments in science and technology for a general English-speaking audience. ... Quark matter or QCD matter refers to any of a number of phases of matter whose degrees of freedom include quarks and gluons. ... The initialism QCD can mean: Quantum chromodynamics Quintessential Player, formerly known as Quintessential CD Quality, Cost, Delivery, A three-letter acronym used in lean manufacturing This page concerning a three-letter acronym or abbreviation is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the... In physics and mathematics, Minkowski space (or Minkowski spacetime) is the mathematical setting in which Einsteins theory of special relativity is most conveniently formulated. ... In physics, the AdS/CFT correspondence is the equivalence between a string theory or supergravity defined on some sort of Anti de Sitter space and a conformal field theory defined on its boundary whose dimension is lower by one. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

Financial info

The RHIC project is sponsored by the United States Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics.^[26] It had a line-item budget of 616.6 million U.S. dollars.^[27] The annual operational budgets were:^[28] The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government responsible for energy policy and nuclear safety. ... Part of a scientific laboratory at the University of Cologne. ... Nuclear physics is the branch of physics concerned with the nucleus of the atom. ... The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. ...

• fiscal year 2005: 131.6 million U.S. dollars
• fiscal year 2006: 115.5 million U.S. dollars
• fiscal year 2007, requested: 143.3 million U.S. dollars

The total investment by 2005 is approximately 1.1 billion U.S. dollars. Though operation under the fiscal year 2006 federal budget cut^[29] was uncertain, a key portion of the operational cost (13 million U.S. dollars) was contributed privately by a group close to Renaissance Technologies of East Setauket, New York.^[30] Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... Renaissance Technologies is a hedge fund management company. ... Setauket-East Setauket is a census-designated place located in Suffolk County, New York. ...

RHIC in fiction

The novel Cosm (ISBN 0-380-79052-1) by the American author Gregory Benford takes place at RHIC. The science fiction setting describes the main character Alicia Butterworth, a physicist at the BRAHMS experiment, and a new universe being created in RHIC by accident, while running with Uranium ions.^[31] Gregory Benford (born January 30, 1941 in Mobile, Alabama) is an American science fiction author and physicist who is on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... The Universe is defined as the summation of all particles and energy that exist and the space-time in which all events occur. ... General Name, Symbol, Number uranium, U, 92 Chemical series actinides Group, Period, Block n/a, 7, f Appearance silvery gray metallic; corrodes to a spalling black oxide coat in air Standard atomic weight 238. ...

References

1. ^ ^{a b} see also Nucl. Instr. Meth. Phys. Res. A 499:2–3, p. 428ff; preprints are available at BRAHMS, PHENIX, PHOBOS, and STAR.
2. ^ M. Harrison, T. Ludlam, & S. Ozaki, Nucl. Instr. Meth. Phys. Res. A 499:2–3, 235 (2003); M. Harrison, S. Peggs, and T. Roser, Ann. Rev. Nucl. Part. Phys. 52, 425 (2002); E. D. Courant, Ann. Rev. Nucl. Part. Phys. 53, 1 (2003).
3. ^ e.g. M. Riordan and W. A. Zajc, Scientific American 294:5, 34 (2006); Scientific American Podcast, April 26, 2006 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3).
4. ^ Description of Siberian Snakes in the CERN Courier
5. ^ AC dipole as a non-linear diagnostic tool
6. ^ T. Ludlam & L. McLerran, Phys. Today October 2003, 48 (2003).
7. ^ L. N. Lipatov, Sov. J. Nucl. Phys. 23, 338 (1976).
8. ^ D. Kharzeev et al., Phys. Lett. B 561, 93 (2002).
9. ^ E. Iancu & R. Venugopalan, in Quark Gluon Plasma 3, edited by R. C. Hwa & X.-N. Wang, (World Scientific, Singapore, 2003), p. 249.
10. ^ F. Karsch, in Lectures on Quark Matter, Lect. Notes Phys. 583 (Springer, Berlin, 2002), p. 209.
11. ^ M. Gyulassy & L. McLarren, Nucl. Phys. A 750, 30 (2005).
12. ^ K. McNulty Walsh, "Latest RHIC Results Make News Headlines at Quark Matter 2004", Discover Brookhaven 2:1, 14–17 (2004).
13. ^ I. Arsene et al. (BRAHMS collaboration), Nucl. Phys. A 757 1, (2005); K. Adcox et al. (PHENIX Collaboration), Nucl. Phys. A 757, 184 (2005); B. B. Back et al. (PHOBOS Collaboration), Nucl. Phys. A 757, 28 (2005); J. Adams et al. (STAR Collaboration), Nucl. Phys. A 757, 102 (2005).
14. ^ ATLAS Experiment Heavy Ion Physics Group
15. ^ The Case for a Large EMCalorimeter in ALICE; DOE Review 2005
16. ^ A. Deshpande et al., Ann. Rev. Nucl. Part. Sci. 55, 165 (2005).
17. ^ S. Aronson, Phys. Today, October 2006, 15.
18. ^ ^{a b} R. Jaffe et al., Rev. Mod. Phys. 72, 1125–1140 (2000).
19. ^ M. Mukerjee, Scientific American 280:March, 60 (1999).
20. ^ Sunday Times, 18 July 1999.
21. ^ e.g. ABCNEWS.com, from the Internet Archive.
22. ^ e.g. MSNBC, June 14, 2000.
23. ^ BBC, 17 March 2005.
24. ^ H. Nastase, hep-th/0501068 (2005).
25. ^ E. S. Reich, New Scientist 185:2491, 16 (2005).
26. ^ U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics
27. ^ M. Harrison, T. Ludlam, & S. Ozaki, Nucl. Instr. Meth. Phys. Res. A 499:2–3, 235 (2003).
28. ^ U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Budget
29. ^ e.g. FYI, November 22, 2005; New York Times, November 27, 2005.
30. ^ e.g. APS News Online, March 2006; FYI, November 22, 2005.
31. ^ Brookhaven Bulletin 52, 8 (1998), p. 2.

is the 116th day of the year (117th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... MP3 is a popular digital audio encoding and lossy compression format. ... is the 199th day of the year (200th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1999 Gregorian calendar). ... The logo of Internet Archive Internet Archive headquarters The Internet Archive (IA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to maintaining an on-line library and archive of Web and multimedia resources. ... June 14 is the 165th day of the year (166th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 76th day of the year (77th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... November 22 is the 326th day (327th on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 331st day of the year (332nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... November 22 is the 326th day (327th on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

See also

• The ISABELLE Project

Isabelle may refer to: The French version of the name Isabel The Isabelle theorem prover ISABELLE, a cancelled particle accelerator project A Japanese rock group featuring Aya from Psycho le Cemu on guitar Categories: | ...

External links

• Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
• Brookhaven National Laboratory Collider-Accelerator Department
• RHIC Run Overview
• Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Google Maps
• Various photos of the RHIC tunnel near the PHOBOS experiment
• A Puzzling Signal in RHIC Experiments, Physics News, March 15, 2005