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The research narrows for a mysterious form of material predicted from Einstein's theory of special relativity. After more than a decade of exploration, scientists at the world's largest particle collider believe that they are about to find it.
But researchers do not look in the exploded bowels of particles that have crashed almost at the speed of light.
Instead, the physicists of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27 km underground ring buried near the Swiss-French border, search for the missing material, called condensate of colored glass, by studying what happens when particles do not collide, but they get closer to each other in near misses.
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In the standard model of physics, the theory that describes the zoo of subatomic particles, 98% of the visible matter in the universe is held together by fundamental particles called gluons. These well-named particles are responsible for the strength that sticks quarks to form protons and neutrons. When protons are accelerated at a speed close to that of light, a strange phenomenon occurs: the concentration of gluons within them soars.
"In these cases, the gluons divide into pairs of gluons with lower energies, and these gluons then divide, and so on," Daniel Tapia Takaki, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California. University of Kansas, said in a statement. "At one point, the gluon division inside the proton reaches a limit at which gluon multiplication ceases to increase.This state is known as condensate of colored glass, a phase hypothetical matter that would exist very very energy protons and in heavy nuclei ".
according to Brookhaven National LaboratoryCondensate could explain many unresolved mysteries of physics, such as particle formation in high-energy collisions or the distribution of matter in particles. However, the confirmation of its existence has escaped scientists for decades. But in 2000, physicists at Brookhaven 's relativistic heavy ion collider discovered the first signs of the possible existence of a condensate of colored glass.
When the lab broke apart gold atoms with their electrons removed, they found a strange signal in the particles coming out of the collisions, suggesting that the protons of the atoms were cluttered with gluons and began to form glass condensate. color. Other experiments with heavy ions colliding with the LHC have had similar results. However, the collision of protons at relativistic speeds can only give a fleeting glimpse of their bowels before the subatomic particles explode violently. Exploring the interior of protons takes a softer approach.
When charged particles, such as protons, are accelerated at high speeds, they create a strong electromagnetic fields and release energy in the form of photons or particles of light. (Thanks to the dual nature of light, it's also a wave.) These energy leaks were once considered an unwanted side effect of particle accelerators, but physicists have learned new ways of Use these high energy photons to their advantage.
If the protons sneak into each other in the accelerator, the storm of photons that they release can cause proton collisions on photon. These so-called ultra-peripheral collisions are the key to understanding the inner workings of high-energy protons.
"When a high-energy light wave strikes a proton, it produces particles – all kinds of particles – without breaking the proton," Tapia Takaki, said in a statement. "These particles are recorded by our detector and allow us to reconstruct an unprecedented high quality image of what's inside."
Tapia Takaki and an international collaboration of scientists are now using this method to hunt for elusive color glass condensate. The researchers published the first results of their study in the August issue of The European Physical Journal C. For the first time, the team was able to indirectly measure the gluon density at four different energy levels. At the highest level, they found evidence that a condensate of colored glass was just starting to form.
The experimental results "… are very exciting and provide new information on the dynamics of the gluon in the proton, [b]There are many theoretical questions that have not been answered, "said Victor Goncalves, professor of physics at the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil and co-author of the study.
For the moment, the existence of a condensate of colored glass remains an elusive mystery.
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