University of Rochester

Title: Nuggets from the Long Island gold rush

Abstract: Through colliding gold nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider on Long Island, man is producing
in the laboratory macroscopic regions of space with an energy density on the order of what existed in the universe at a few microseconds after the Big Bang. The temperatures achieved in these collisions are roughly 40,000
times that at the center of the sun. By studying matter under these conditions we hope to better understand the strong nuclear interaction and the evolution of the early universe. In this talk I will discuss the motivation for the field of heavy ion physics, describe the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider program at Brookhaven National Laboratory and discuss a number of interesting things that have been uncovered by the program to date.