Direct Photon Properties Reveal Secrets of Extreme Nuclear States
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Stefan Bathe and the PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.
When atomic nuclei are smashed together at great speed, resulting temperatures exceed one trillion degrees, 200 million times hotter than the surface of the sun. Scientists who study nuclear matter under extreme conditions have a particular interest in the properties of particles of light called photons, which reveal valuable information because they don’t interact strongly with other particles following a nuclear collision.
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