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Saturday Physics for Everyone: Reverse Alchemy: Turning Gold into the Most Perfect Liquid

Event Type
Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor
Illinois Physics
Location
LOBBY - Loomis Laboratory of Physics, University of Illinois: 1110 W Green St Urbana, IL 61801 United States
Date
Dec 7, 2024   9:45 - 11:15 am  
Speaker
Professor Jaki Noronha-Hostler
Views
15
Originating Calendar
Physics - Saturday Physics for Everyone

We are all familiar with liquids such as water and intuitively know many of its basic properties. But what happens when a liquid is moving at 99.9999% the speed of light? What happens when we heat it up to the hottest temperatures ever reached on Earth? What happens when the liquid forms the smallest droplet known to humanity? To answer these questions, physicists have been performing reverse alchemy.  Instead of turning lead into gold, scientists have been working for the past 20 years to turn gold ions into the smallest, hottest, and fastest flowing droplets of liquid created on Earth- the Quark-Gluon Plasma. In this talk, I will explain how we can study such an extreme liquid and explain why it can provide insight into the Early Universe and potentially what lies inside a neutron star's core. 

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