LHC proton-lead collisions may have created new form of matter
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Lead nuclei melting into a quark-gluon plasma as the result of a high-energy collision (Image: CERN)
A proton-lead collision (Image: CERN)
Compact Muon Solenoid detector for the Large Hadron Collider (Image: CERN)
Plots of "the ridge" from lead-lead, proton-proton, and proton-lead collisions (Image: CERN)
A proton-lead nucleus collision (Image: CERN)
A proton-lead nucleus collision (Image: CERN)
In September, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was being tuned to enable it to study proton-lead nucleus collisions for a data run next year. Eventually it ran and data was collected on the collisions for a period of four hours. When the data was analyzed, it revealed that some particle pairs produced in the collision were traveling in the same direction – a highly unusual situation. Although the data is not sufficient for certainty, the consensus appears to favor this as evidence for production of a color-glass condensate, a new form of exotic matter that has so far only existed as a theory.
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