{"id":229640,"date":"2026-01-23T01:27:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T07:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/atlas-confirms-collective-nature-of-quark-soups-radial-expansion"},"modified":"2026-01-23T01:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T07:27:14","slug":"atlas-confirms-collective-nature-of-quark-soups-radial-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/atlas-confirms-collective-nature-of-quark-soups-radial-expansion","title":{"rendered":"ATLAS confirms collective nature of quark soup\u2019s radial expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/atlas-confirms-collective-nature-of-quark-soups-radial-expansion.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists analyzing data from heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)\u2014the world\u2019s most powerful particle collider, located at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research\u2014have new evidence that a pattern of \u201cflow\u201d observed in particles streaming from these collisions reflects those particles\u2019 collective behavior. The measurements reveal how the distribution of particles is driven by pressure gradients generated by the extreme conditions in these collisions, which mimic what the universe was like just after the Big Bang.<\/p>\n<p>The research is described in a paper <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/abstract\/10.1103\/ldcn-r2lq\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Physical Review Letters<\/i> by the ATLAS Collaboration at the LHC. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University played leading roles in the analysis.<\/p>\n<p>The international team used data from the LHC\u2019s ATLAS experiment to analyze how particles flow outward in radial directions when two beams of lead ions\u2014lead atoms stripped of their electrons\u2014collide after circulating around the 17-mile circumference of the LHC at close to the speed of light. The findings offer new insight into the nature of the hot, dense matter generated in these collisions\u2014with temperatures more than 250,000 times hotter than the sun\u2019s core. These extreme conditions essentially melt the protons and neutrons that make up the colliding ions, setting free their innermost building blocks, quarks and gluons, to create a quark-gluon plasma (QGP).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists analyzing data from heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)\u2014the world\u2019s most powerful particle collider, located at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research\u2014have new evidence that a pattern of \u201cflow\u201d observed in particles streaming from these collisions reflects those particles\u2019 collective behavior. The measurements reveal how the distribution of particles is [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}