24/7 Space News
TIME AND SPACE
Rice U. physicist to lead world's longest-running nuclear collider experiment
file illustration
Rice U. physicist to lead world's longest-running nuclear collider experiment
by Staff Writers
Houston TX (SPX) Jul 08, 2023

Rice University physicist Frank Geurts is one of two scientists elected to lead the world's longest-running nuclear physics experiment at a particle collider facility, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Together with Brookhaven Lab physicist Lijuan Ruan, Geurts will serve a three-year term as co-spokesperson for the STAR collaboration. This group of over 740 scientists from 74 institutions across 15 countries uses a 1,200-ton, building-sized instrument ? the Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC, or STAR detector ? to study what happens when gold ions, protons, or a wide range of other atomic nuclei collide into or zoom past each other at ultrahigh speeds.

As co-spokesperson, Geurts will help manage operations for the STAR collaboration and detector system, acting as a representative of its technical and scientific activity.

"We want to make sure that students and institutes across the collaboration can work efficiently with the data collected by the detector and help disseminate our exciting results to the scientific community and the public," Geurts said.

RHIC, a 2.4-mile-circumference particle accelerator that is the world's second-largest after the Large Hadron Collider, re-enacts on a subatomic scale cosmic events such as the aftermath of the Big Bang or neutron star collisions. The STAR detector system captures and analyzes data generated by the particle collisions inside RHIC to gain insight into the behavior of nuclear matter under extreme conditions.

"We're investigating very fundamental properties of nuclear matter and the best way to do that is by pushing it to its very extremes," Geurts said. "Under extreme conditions like the Big Bang, but also when we have neutron star collisions or potentially even in supernovae, nuclear matter can melt into quarks and gluons ? the substructure of these particles."

Data collected from the collisions offers scientists a snapshot of a primordial state of matter present in the first instants of the universe's existence known as quark-gluon plasma.

"It's basically a soup made up of the particles that form the substructure of protons and neutrons," Geurts said. "In this soup, these so-called quarks and gluons are effectively liberated, not knowing anymore to what neutron or proton they originally belonged. On top of that, because of the high energies, many more quarks and antiquarks are created in this hot soup. There's a high degree of collectivity in these multiparticle systems."

Using STAR, scientists learn about difficult-to-study fundamental forces that govern matter in the universe, such as the strong nuclear force.

"From early experimental results, we learned that quark-gluon plasma is not so much a hot gas of liberated quarks," Geurts said. "Instead, it has the characteristics of a hot and strongly interacting fluid with nearly no viscosity, behaving almost like an ideal liquid. This is very interesting, because ? even though we are looking at what is truly the hottest place in the universe ? we find effects of strongly interacting systems that at times look very similar to what you see in matter at ultracold temperatures."

The strongest of the four fundamental forces in nature (with gravity, electromagnetism and weak force being the other three), the strong force is what holds matter together both inside and outside the nucleons in atoms.

"Let's take a gold nucleus, for example," Geurts said. "You have a lot of neutrons ? which carry no electrical charge ? and protons packed together at the center of an atom. Because protons are positively charged, these particles repel one another, so something else must be way stronger than this electromagnetic force in order to keep them all together. That's the strong force at work."

Geurts' leadership role foregrounds Rice's long-standing contribution as one of STAR's founding members. Not only have Rice scientists been actively involved in the collaboration over its near-quarter-century duration, but the university has also helped improve the detector's particle identification capabilities.

"We can now say with much better precision what kind of particles we see being created in these collisions," Geurts said.

Geurts, who joined STAR in 2000 as a postdoctoral researcher, highlighted its role as a training ground for generations of scientists.

"We have graduate students who were not born when we started the experiment. We have professors who started their careers as graduate students in this experiment and now are leading new groups throughout the world in this endeavor. The data collected by STAR will continue to serve as an invaluable resource for many more doctoral theses and papers to come."

Both the detector and the collider are scheduled to run experiments and continue recording data through the end of 2025, after which they will cease operations. Components of RHIC will be transformed into an Electron-Ion Collider, which is expected to begin operation in the early 2030s.

"Our responsibility as a management team is to pave the way for STAR to continue being an innovative and productive scientific enterprise during its post-operational phase," Geurts said. "We expect that STAR will continue to come up with very exciting science for five, eight, maybe ten years after we record our last heavy-ion collision in 2025."

Related Links
Rice University
Understanding Time and Space

Subscribe Free To Our Daily Newsletters
Tweet

RELATED CONTENT
The following news reports may link to other Space Media Network websites.
TIME AND SPACE
First direct visualization of a zero-field pair density wave
Upton NY (SPX) Jul 04, 2023
In the field of superconductivity-the phenomenon in which electrons can flow through a material with essentially zero resistance-the "holy grail" of discovery is a superconductor that can perform under everyday temperatures and pressures. Such a material could revolutionize modern life. But currently, even the "high-temperature" (high-Tc) superconductors that have been discovered must be kept very cold to function-too cold for most applications. Scientists still have much to learn before room-temp ... read more

TIME AND SPACE
Long history and bright future of space sample deliveries

SpaceX Dragon splashes down carrying 3,600 pounds of samples, experiments

SpaceX Dragon to return to Earth with experiments, samples from ISS

Virgin Galactic's use of the 'Overview Effect' to promote space tourism is a terrible irony

TIME AND SPACE
A space rocket hotter than the Sun

Unfavourable weather delays final Ariane 5 launch

Chinese private space company to launch latest rocket in 2024

ISRO terminates hot test for semi-cryogenic engine midway

TIME AND SPACE
Ingenuity phones home

A bumpy road ahead for Curiosity: Sols 3876-3879

Gullies on Mars could have been formed by recent periods of liquid meltwater

Up up up and finally over: Sols 3873-3875

TIME AND SPACE
Tianzhou 5 reconnects with Tiangong space station

China questions whether there is a new moon race afoot

Three Chinese astronauts return safely to Earth

Scientific experimental samples brought back to Earth, delivered to scientists

TIME AND SPACE
Radio telescope observations confirm unintended radiation from large satellite constellations

ESA unveils its comprehensive, high-resolution image library in a revamped platform

AST SpaceMobile and Maritime Launch Services Boost Capital with Stock Offerings

Apex raises $16M in Series A funding

TIME AND SPACE
Microsoft-Activision deal back on track after US court win

Mountain of strategic metals stranded in DR Congo begins to shift

The chore of packing just got faster and easier

No additional radiation at cruising altitude off the coast of Brazil

TIME AND SPACE
Preventing interplanetary pollution that could pose a threat to life on Earth and other planets

A surprise chemical find by ALMA may help detect and confirm protoplanets

Reconstructing alien astronomers' view of our home galaxy's chemistry

New era of exoplanet discovery begins with images of 'Jupiter's Younger Sibling'

TIME AND SPACE
First ultraviolet data collected by ESA's JUICE mission

Unveiling Jupiter's upper atmosphere

ASU study: Jupiter's moon Europa may have had a slow evolution

Juno captures lightning bolts above Jupiter's north pole

Subscribe Free To Our Daily Newsletters




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2024 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. All articles labeled "by Staff Writers" include reports supplied to Space Media Network by industry news wires, PR agencies, corporate press officers and the like. Such articles are individually curated and edited by Space Media Network staff on the basis of the report's information value to our industry and professional readership. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Statement Our advertisers use various cookies and the like to deliver the best ad banner available at one time. All network advertising suppliers have GDPR policies (Legitimate Interest) that conform with EU regulations for data collection. By using our websites you consent to cookie based advertising. If you do not agree with this then you must stop using the websites from May 25, 2018. Privacy Statement. Additional information can be found here at About Us.