Relativistic Heavy Ions Collider

Relativistic is a word that physicists use to mean things that are traveling at nearly the speed of light. You've heard of Einstein's theory of relativity? (And its famous equation?) Well, that's where the word comes from. Things start acting kind of weird when they go that fast, which is why thousands of physicists are so interested in RHIC.

Heavy ions are large atoms without their electrons. RHIC will use mostly gold, which is one of the heaviest common elements around. When you're crashing atoms together, like RHIC will, you want as big a target as possible! But don't think that Brookhaven is going to turn into Fort Knox -- RHIC will use less than a gram of gold in 20 years of operation! (But that little amount will provide billions and billions of atoms to collide.)

Collider, of course, means just what it sounds like. RHIC will collide things together, smashing them head-on and looking to see what comes out. This makes RHIC different from many other accelerators in the world, most of which smash a moving beam into a still target. RHIC and a few other machines are actually capable of aiming two beams of particles, each traveling at nearly the speed of light, and getting them to hit each other. And, RHIC will be the only one to do this with heavy ions.

Read more about it here

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