빅뱅 이전에 우주는 액체상태"





< 참 고 그 림 >

음양오행에서 우주의 모든 기원을 태극 수(水) 라고 하지요. 그런데 최근 과학에서도 이와 같은 발견을 했네요. 빅뱅 직후의 우주 상태가 액체라구요.... (초롱이 한마디 )

우주 생성 이론과 관련, 약 150억 년 전 '빅뱅(대폭발)' 직후의 우주 상태는 기체가 아니라 액체 상태였다는 새 학설이 제기됐다.
19일 아사히신문에 따르면 일본 도쿄(東京)대와 미국 브룩헤븐 국립연구소 등 합동 연구진은 18일 미국 물리학회에서 이 같은 새 이론을 발표했다.

연구진은 2000년 이후 가속기를 이용, 금의 원자핵을 광속에 가까운 속도로 정면충돌시키는 실험을 계속해왔다. 이 충격으로 빅뱅 후 수십만 분의 1초 뒤의 우주 온도인 약 섭씨 1조도 이상 상태를 재현해 초고온, 초고밀도의 '모의 우주'를 만들었다.

'모의 우주'가 기체 상태라면 물질 형성의 최소단위인 '쿼크'가 사방으로 튀어나가야 하는데 연구진이 예상했던 것과 달리 수평 방향으로 튀어나가는 경우가 많았다. 

연구진은 이에 따라 빅빙 직후 우주 상태는 쿼크가 자유롭게 움직일 수 있는 기체가 아니라 덩어리 형태로 일정 방향으로 움직이는 액체였을 것이라는 결론을 내렸다또 빅뱅 직후 우주 형태와 관련해 연구진은 럭비공을 세워놓은 모양이었을 것으로 추정했다. 

하지만 액체 상태의 우주는 매우 짧은 순간만 존재하고 바로 기체 상태로 변했을 것으로 연구진은 분석했다. 

공동연구진은 "이번 발견은 우주 탄생의 수수께끼를 풀고 입자의 성질을 비롯한 물질의 성립과정을 연구하는데도 큰 도움이 될 것"이라고 밝혔다.

도쿄=조헌주특파원 hanscho@donga.com

 

UCR Researchers Part of Brookhaven National Laboratory Team That Discovered “Perfect” Liquid Thought to be What Existed When the Universe Began
New state of matter more remarkable than predicted — raising many new questions
(April 26, 2005)
 

A computer image generated from data collected at the PHENIX detector during RHIC's second run cycle.Reconstructed tracks (in green) point towards the location of the collisions. The beam path is shown in red.
A computer image generated from data collected at the PHENIX detector during RHIC's second run cycle.Reconstructed tracks (in green) point towards the location of the collisions. The beam path is shown in red.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – www.ucr.edu – Researchers at the University of California, Riverside were part of a team using a giant “atom smasher” at Brookhaven National Laboratory to uncover a unique new state of hot, dense matter, a nearly perfect liquid, which resembles what physicists believe to have existed immediately after the Big Bang. 

Two UC Riverside physicist, Kenneth Barish, and Richard Seto, were among scientists contributing to the groundbreaking research. Using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) – a giant “atom smasher” – the team of scientists collided gold ions at nearly the speed of light to create the new state of hot, dense matter consisting of subatomic particles. 

Scientists worked in four groups named PHENIX, BRAHMS, PHOBOS and STAR at the New York laboratory. Barish and Seto, who specialize in experimental nuclear and particle physics, played leading roles in the PHENIX collaboration, an acronym for Pioneering High Energy Nuclear Interaction Experiment. The group used RHIC to collide the ions, while the detector PHENIX was the device used to examine the debris formed in the collisions. In a sense, PHENIX was the camera that took X-ray photographs of the collisions. The scale of the project was enormous – PHENIX is roughly the size of a gymnasium, cost $100 million and took roughly 1 billion photographs over six months. 

UCR is a founding member of the collaboration and has played a leadership role since its beginning. 

“We have built one of the main subsystems, designed and built specialized electronics designed to pick out the most interesting events and our group analyzed data-prepared papers that are a basis for the conclusions in a preliminary summary outlining the first years of operation,” explained Barish. 

In addition to professors Barish and Seto, the UCR group included 10 postdoctoral fellows, six graduate students, six undergraduate students and Professor Emeritus of Physics S.Y. Fung. The group was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, which is headed by former UCR Chancellor Raymond Orbach. 

The working groups have noted that some of the observations at RHIC fit with the theoretical predictions for a quark-gluon plasma (QGP) – the type of matter thought to have existed just microseconds after the Big Bang. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider forms this matter through the acceleration of gold ions colliding head-on at nearly the speed of light. 

The PHENIX group observed the resulting impact by focusing on the routes taken by thousands of particles produced in the crash of ions. What the researchers found surprised them all – the subatomic particles produced in the collision tended to move collectively instead of randomly. 

Scientists refer to this phenomenon as “flow” since it has the properties of fluid motion. However, unlike ordinary liquids, in which individual molecules move about randomly, the hot matter formed from the collisions seemed to move somewhat like a school of fish that react as one entity. Temperature of the liquid has reached to 150,00 times hotter than the center of the sun. 

The announcement came at the conference for the American Physical Society, which was held in Tampa, Fla. on April 18. 

Describing the fluid motion as nearly “perfect” – meaning it has a very low viscosity and flows with essentially zero resistance – the discovery has important implications for the future of physics. 

“This is really the beginning of an age of discovery,” says Barish. “We are now in a position to make truly exciting discoveries as we learn more detailed properties of this matter.”

 

Quark-gluon Plasma in gaseous (left) and liquid (right) states

Photo Caption: Quark-gluon Plasma in gaseous (left) and liquid (right) states
 
Related Links:
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory Web site
  • Kenneth Barish's faculty Web page
  • Richard Seto's faculty Web page
  • Press Release from Brookhaven National Laboratory
    The University of California, Riverside is a major research institution and a national center for the humanities. Key areas of research include nanotechnology, genomics, environmental studies, digital arts and sustainable growth and development. With a current undergraduate and graduate enrollment of nearly 17,000, the campus is projected to grow to 21,000 students by 2010. Located in the heart of inland Southern California, the nearly 1,200-acre, park-like campus is at the center of the region's economic development. Visit www.ucr.edu or call 951-UCR-NEWS for more information. Media sources are available at http://www.mediasources.ucr.edu/.
    News Media Contact:
      Name: Ricardo Duran
      Phone: 951.827.5893
      Email: ricardo.duran@ucr.edu

    출처 : http://www.newsroom.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi?id=1051


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