Smashing Gold Atoms Produces Densest Matter Ever Created

Physicists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory have smashed the nuclei of gold atoms together at near the speed of light to produce the highest density of matter ever artificially created, it was announced Tuesday. The density was more than 20 times as great as that within the nuclei of ordinary matter and produced temperatures above 1 trillion degrees.

Researchers believe large amounts of such matter existed in the milliseconds following the Big Bang, the explosion that gave birth to the universe. The team hopes such collisions will break protons and neutrons into their subcomponents--quarks and gluons--and further reveal the internal structure of nuclei.

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--Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II