Tech Talk

Scientists believe that the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island can cause the destruction of the earth. The RHIC, which took eight years to construct, aims to smash the nuclei of atoms together and study their wreckage to determine the fundamental properties of matter.

RHIC takes atoms of gold and swing them around two 2.8 km circular tubes where powerful magnets accelerate them to almost the speed of light. When they collide, they do so in minute collisions that are 10,000 times hotter than the Sun.

Scientists hope to create a quark0gluon plasma, a state of matter than probably has not existed naturally in the Universe since the Big Bang. But can they create something else? Like a mini-black hole that could expand and engulf the Earth?