In the Beginning
A matter of universal proportion
By Lisa Lambert , M.A. ’05

Historians understand that knowing where we are and where we are going requires a thorough examination of where we have been. But in the case of Kent State University physicists, looking at past centuries — or even millennia — wouldn’t suffice. To achieve their aims, they needed to peer back at the origin of the universe, nearly 14 billion years ago.

The work of an international collaboration involving Kent State physics professors and graduate students — though it doesn’t involve time travel — may seem to some the stuff of science fiction. The researchers have successfully recreated the material essence of the universe as it would have been mere microseconds after the Big Bang, discovering evidence for the existence of a new phase of matter in the process.

“This project gives us information about how the universe looked a millionth of a second after its beginning,” says Dr. Spiros Margetis, Kent State associate professor of physics.

The new form of matter is a dense, fluid-like state consisting of quarks (the ultimate building blocks of every atomic nucleus) and gluons (the particles responsible for holding the quarks together). One spoonful weighs about as much as all the water in Lake Erie, Margetis says.

This insight, which allows scientists to study matter in its earliest form, comes from an experiment carried out at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a giant atom smasher with a circumference of 2.4 miles, located at Brookhaven National Lab in New York. More than 15 years ago, Kent State was one of six original groups that founded the experiment, which has since grown to include 500-plus individuals from 52 institutions, representing 12 countries.

Since 2000, the collaboration has produced more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals, and many more are in the pipeline. Kent State has played a prominent part in approximately 10 of these, meaning 10 papers were based in whole or in part on work taken from the doctoral dissertations of Kent State students working on the project.

At the fundamental level, the research helps us understand what the universe is made of and how the early universe evolved into the universe as we now know it. In addition, the development of the equipment and techniques necessary to conduct the research at RHIC pushes forward the boundaries of technology and provides advanced training for young researchers.

Presently, nuclear techniques are used extensively in medical imaging, cancer radiotherapy and nondestructive analysis of steel, oil samples, ceramics and many other materials. As our understanding, equipment and techniques advance, we are able to improve noninvasive screening for many diseases, better treat cancerous tumors and do material analyses, for example.

“We live in a very high-tech world, and it’s important we continue to train people to contribute to the development of state-of-the-art technology,” says Dr. Bryon Anderson, Kent State professor of physics. “The students working at RHIC obtain this kind of training.” The American Institute of Physics ranked the discovery as the top physics story for 2005.

For more information about this project, contact Dr. Declan Keane at 330-672-2959 or keane@kent.edu, or Dr. Spiros Margetis at 330-672-9739 or smargeti@kent.edu. You can also visit this American Institute of Physics (AIP) News Update.