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Media Advisory

Number: 03-49a
Released: June 11, 2003
Contact: Karen McNulty Walsh, 631 344-8350 or Mona S. Rowe, 631 344-5056

Latest RHIC Results to be Presented at Brookhaven

EVENT: Scientists conducting research at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the world’s largest facility for research in nuclear physics, will present results from their latest experiments at a special scientific colloquium. The scientists will be available to meet with reporters after the talks. Research at RHIC offers insight into the basic structure of matter.

WHEN: Wednesday, June 18, 2003, 11 a.m.

WHERE: The U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Large Seminar Room in Building 510, Physics. Brookhaven Lab is located on William Floyd Parkway (County Road 46), one and a half miles north of Exit 68 of the Long Island Expressway. See maps and directions.

DETAILS: The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider is designed to produce a very hot and dense microcosm of matter — known as quark-gluon plasma — that is believed to have existed in the first microseconds after the birth of the universe. The latest experiments – conducted from January through March 2003 — collided heavy gold nuclei head-on with deuterons (nuclei consisting of one proton and one neutron). These collisions, along with collisions between two beams of protons, serve as a basis for comparison with RHIC’s collisions of two gold beams. In comparing these very different types of collisions, scientists have seen distinctions that clearly show that head-on gold-gold collisions are producing a nuclear environment quite different from that of deuteron-gold collisions. Although RHIC scientists are not ready to claim success, they are confident that RHIC collisions of gold ions have created unusual conditions and that they are on the right path to the discovery of quark-gluon plasma (see news release).

Researchers will present detailed results, and both experimentalists and theorists will be available for media interviews to put the experimental findings into the context of the search for quark-gluon plasma. Also expected to attend the colloquium are: John Marburger, Science Adviser to the President; James Decker, Principal Deputy Director, DOE Office of Science; Peter Rosen, Associate Director for High Energy and Nuclear Physics within the Office of Science; and Dennis Kovar, Director of the Division of Nuclear Physics within the Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies. Brookhaven also builds and operates major facilities available to university, industrial, and government scientists. The Laboratory is managed by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited liability company founded by Stony Brook University and Battelle, a nonprofit applied science and technology organization.