Scientists at the Brookhaven National Energy Laboratory in New York (USA) have recreated the highest temperature ever reached since the Big Bang , 250,000 times hotter than that recorded in the center of the Sun and close to four trillion degrees. centigrade .
To achieve this, physicists have used the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) particle accelerator, a "brother" of the European Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In its interior they have produced collisions of gold ions in such a way that ultra-hot explosions of only milliseconds have been recreated. "The RHIC was designed to create matter at the temperatures present in the early stages of formation of the Universe," they explained. "This temperature is hot enough to melt protons and neutrons," said the center's researcher, Steven Vigdor, at a conference at the American Physical Society in Washington. These particles make up atoms, but they are in turn made up of smaller components called quarks and gluons.
Specifically, scientists are looking for small irregularities that could explain why matter formed in its early stages. They also hope to find more practical applications, such as "spintronics" , an emerging technology that aims to make computing devices smaller, faster and more powerful.
