Re-creating what happened oh so very long ago

Imagine the thrill of re-creating, if only for a fleeting instant, the super hot plasma that may have existed in the first microseconds after the birth of the universe.

How do simple words describe the potential for having a hand in confirming humankind’s theory of how matter is composed?

“It is exciting,” said Creighton University physicist Janet Seger, “learning something no one has known before, to see things no one has seen before.”

In a way, said the Rev. Thomas S. McShane, another Creighton physicist, “it’s like why people climb mountains.”

Seger; McShane; a third Creighton physicist, Michael Cherney; and a number of their students are participating in an international collaboration aimed at producing a dense, microscopic matter called quark-gluon plasma.

This matter does not exist on Earth but is believed to have existed in the first millionth of a second after the big bang that scientists think spawned the universe.

The research to re-create the plasma is being conducted at a high-energy collider at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.

Earlier this year, Seger said, experiments at the laboratory provided “tantalizing” evidence that the lab may be producing the plasma. And while no one is declaring victory, Cherney said he wouldn’t be surprised if scientists eventually point to the experiments as confirmation of the existence of the plasma.

“In terms of our fundamental understanding of how the world works,” Seger said, “this is very important.”

McShane described creating the plasma as “the holy grail of human understanding of how things are put together.”

No one can know what this research means for humanity. This could be similar in significance to Einstein’s theory of relativity, which laid the foundation for astrophysics and the subsequent possibility of space travel.

“This is not just the history of what things were like then,” said Martin Gaskell, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln astronomer. “It’s giving us a fundamental understanding of what we are.

“You just never know how this type of fundamental knowledge could have practical spinoffs,” Gaskell said. “It potentially could yield knowledge that could be used for good or evil.”

The $600 million high-energy collider took 10 years to build. The first experiments were conducted in 2000.

Creighton has participated from nearly the beginning. Its role has been to help write the software that runs a 1,200-ton machine that helps detect whether the experiments are producing the plasma.

The machine and others like it are necessary because humans cannot see or touch the plasma. The plasma would exist on a microscopic level and then only for a fraction of a second (0.00000000000000000000001 of a second) before coalescing into another state. And if the plasma exists, it is at a temperature higher than the core of the sun – in excess of a trillion degrees.

According to the prevailing theory of how matter was formed, quarks and gluons existed in a free-floating state for fleeting microseconds after the birth of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago. They could not sustain their free-floating state and immediately coalesced into another state. (Quarks are a fundamental building block of atoms, and gluons are a sort of glue that holds them together.)

If scientists can replicate free-floating quarks and gluons, they can confirm the existing theories. They can then learn more by studying the underlying properties of the plasma.

If these experiments indicate something else, the results could steer human knowledge in a new direction.

To break apart quarks and gluons, scientists shoot gold ions along the highest-speed, highest-energy collider on Earth. The ions travel at virtually the speed of light – 186,000 miles a second – in two opposite, intersecting circular paths. Each second, thousands of subatomic collisions occur, sending out thousands more subatomic particles. The idea is that the collision and resulting high temperatures will liberate the quarks and gluons.

Thus far, Cherney said, the work has been rewarding.

“Science takes you to a large number of dead ends,” he said, “but sometimes everything falls into place. … It is exciting to know that our models of the universe have been tested down to the first millionth of a second.”

To confirm that the plasma has been created, scientists will search for indications of its fleeting existence and then rule out other explanations. The process could take a couple of years.

Early on, some scientists worried that these super collisions of atomic matter could create a black hole on Earth or otherwise trigger a chain of events destroying the Earth. The concerns came from reputable enough scientists that the Brookhaven laboratory researched extensive answers.

McShane said people have nothing to fear. For one thing, the research discounted the likelihood of catastrophe.

For another, a sufficient number of experiments already have taken place, he said, so that if catastrophe were going to happen, “it would have happened by now, and we would all have been long gone.”

A Jesuit priest, McShane said it was difficult to put into words his theological feelings about this project.

“It is better to know something than to not know,” McShane said. “This is something that is worth doing, eminently worth doing. There is no conflict between good science and good religion.”

For Cherney, part of the fun has been seeing the excitement of the students involved. Overhearing one of them call his girlfriend about news of the experiments, Cherney said, “I felt these years of effort were worth it.”