Evidence of parity violation from RHIC test. Neat.

[Locut0s]

http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=7358

For those who like physics news.

 

[Eli]

The plasma "bubble" created in the collisions at RHIC lasted for a mere millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second,

When the gold nuclei, traveling at 99.999% of the speed of light, smashed together, the plasma that resulted was so energetic that a tiny cube of it with sides measuring about a quarter of the width of a human hair would contain enough energy to power the entire United States for a year.

Whoa. Could we ever harness such energy creation?

 

[Matthiasa]

Whoa. Could we ever harness such energy creation?

It's that much energy since that's about how much energy it takes to speed something up to 99.999% the speed of light.

 

[IronWing]

It's that much energy since that's about how much energy it takes to speed something up to 99.999% the speed of light.

Except photons. I can do that banging two rocks together.

 

[Matthiasa]

To speed up something with mass.

 

[Locut0s]

Whoa. Could we ever harness such energy creation?

Those number are deceiving because what they are really talking about here is energy density and not the volume of energy generated.