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Scientists At CERN Reach Five Trillion Degrees Celsius In LHC Experiment, Recreating Conditions Of The Universe Just After The Big Bang
In August 2012, a group of European scientists made history by creating in the laboratory an artificial temperature much higher than that of the Sun — the most extreme ever recorded on Earth. The achievement took place at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, located in Switzerland.
During the experiment, a record of five trillion degrees Celsius was reached. To give you an idea, this temperature is over 300 thousand times higher than that recorded in the core of the Sun, which is around 15 million degrees.
The experiment took place inside the Large Hadron Collider, also known as LHC. This is the world’s largest particle accelerator, spanning 27 kilometers, installed beneath the border between Switzerland and France.
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In this circular tunnel, particles are accelerated to nearly the speed of light and then collide with immense force.
The Collision Of Heavy Ions
According to the American broadcaster PBS, the collisions conducted at the LHC involved lead ions. These ions are heavy atoms, composed of many protons and neutrons.
Due to their large mass, they release more energy upon collision. And more energy, in this case, means more heat.
The result of these collisions was the creation of a condition that, according to scientists, resembles what existed in the first microseconds after the Big Bang.
The substance generated was called a “fireball of quarks and gluons.” It is a kind of soup of fundamental particles that make up everything that currently exists.
How To Measure This Heat?
Measuring such an extreme temperature is not a simple task. There is no thermometer that can withstand this environment.
Instead, physicists analyze the effects of the collisions: which particles emerge, how they spread, and at what speed they move. With this data, they perform complex calculations to determine the temperature generated.
In 2020, Professor Urs Wiedemann, a CERN specialist, explained the process using a musical metaphor.
He compared the ripples generated in the plasma to the differences in harmonics between musical instruments. These subatomic “sound waves” allow for calculating properties such as temperature, energy density, and viscosity.
The Most Perfect Fluid
The plasma of quarks and gluons formed in the experiment has an impressive characteristic. It exhibits extremely low resistance to friction, being considered the most perfect fluid ever observed by science. The idea of perfection here refers to its ability to flow without losing energy.
A Dispute Of Billions Of Degrees
The European record did not come without competition. Two months earlier, in June 2012, an American laboratory had also created an extreme temperature.
The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), in New York, reached 4 trillion degrees Celsius. For a time, the U.S. led this scientific dispute.
However, when CERN confirmed its data in August of that same year, the record officially passed to Europe. The European confirmation took two years due to the complexity of the measurements involved.
Still, both milestones are valued. In 2015, physicist Julia Velkovska from Vanderbilt University stated that, even with 25 times more energy at the LHC, the effects in the collisions were not that different.
For her, after a certain point, it is not possible to go further: “You cannot be more perfect than perfect.”
With information from Olhar Digital.
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