NSCL helps to serve up "perfect liquid"

Scientist at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—including a NSCL research group lead by University Distinguished Professor Gary Westfall—created a new state of hot and dense matter out of quarks and gluons that are the basic constituents of nucleons.

This new state of matter is quite different and even more remarkable than had been predicted. Instead of behaving like a gas of free quarks and gluons, as was expected, the new matter created in RHIC's heavy ion collisions appears to be more like a liquid with very low viscosity: it is a perfect liquid. Gary Westfall, who announced the findings at the APS spring meeting in Tampa, is member of the STAR collaboration, the biggest of the four detector collaborations.

MSU Newsroom Brookhaven National Laboratory News News Story Archive	Event in the STAR detector