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Answer from 'dusty shelf' aids quest to see matter as it was just after big bang Scientists trying to recreate conditions that existed just a few millionths of a second after the big bang that started the universe have run into a mysterious problem - some of the reactions they are getting don't mesh with what they thought they were supposed to see.Now, two University of Washington physicists have dusted off a quantum mechanics technique usually associated with low-energy physics and applied it to results from experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory on New York's Long Island that produce high-energy collisions between gold nuclei. The result is data much more in line with what theorists expected from the experiments, said John Cramer, a UW physics professor. That means physicists at Brookhaven probably have actually succeeded in creating quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter that has not existed since a microsecond after the big bang that began the universe.
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