Nuclear Physics

Javier Orjuela-Koop Wins People's Choice Award at Inaugural 3 Minute Thesis Competition

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 20:46:31 +0000

Javier Orjuela-Koop Wins People's Choice Award at Inaugural 3 Minute Thesis Competition Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/02/2018 - 13:46

View the 3MT News Article

Congratulations to Physics Grad Student Javier Orjuela-Koop for winning the People's Choice Award during the Inaugural Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition on Tuesday, February 20th.

Orjuela-Koop's Thesis, "Michael Phelps and the Early Universe" was presented using only one powerpoint slide, which was an image of Michael Phelps swimming. His presentation earned the People's Choice Award by a popular audience vote.

Orjuela-Koop said his 3 Minute Thesis naturally arose from his current research in high-energy nuclear, "We collide gold atoms at nearly the speed of light at Brookhaven National Lab, reaching temperatures at which ordinary matter becomes a liquid of quarks and gluons (the technical name is 'quark-gluon plasma'). This liquid has very peculiar properties. Namely, it has an extremely low viscosity (the lowest of any liquid in nature), yet certain kinds of particles lose substantial amounts of energy when going through it," Orjuela-Koop said. "In order to present this in three minutes, I came up with an analogy, comparing Michael Phelps to a heavy subatomic particle 'swimming' through the liquid. This was meant to provide a clear mental picture to which a general audience could relate."

Check out the video of Javier Ojruela-Koop's 3MT lecture below.

[video:https://youtu.be/S4ByqYw1dLc]

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National Nuclear Physics School 2017 Hosted in ��«��Ƶ

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Aug 2017 21:59:20 +0000

National Nuclear Physics School 2017 Hosted in ��«��Ƶ Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/08/2017 - 15:59

The ��«��Ƶ hosted the National Nuclear Physics Summer School on campus from July 9-22, 2017. This is an annual two-week series of lectures for graduate students and postdoctoral research scientists in nuclear physics, and is funded by the National Science Foundation. Each summer the school is in a different location, and this year the ��«��Ƶ nuclear physics group, consisting of Professors Ed Kinney, Jamie Nagle, Dennis Perepelitsa, and Paul Romatschke, applied and were selected to host the school. The school was expertly coordinated by Emily Flanagan of the Physics Department.

The school hosted 50 students from all over the country and even the world - from as far away as Chile, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, and Armenia, along with 15 lecturers drawn from nuclear physics experts all over the country. Lecture topics covered all areas of nuclear physics from nuclear medicine to neutron star physics, stockpile stewardship, the science of fundamental particles, and more. The nuclear physics faculty at the ��«��Ƶ study the sub-atomic structure of the proton and the properties of matter that existed at the ultra-high temperatures in the earliest stages of the Universe. Their research is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. These topics were a particular highlight and area of discussion between students and lecturers.

Every year, approximately 100 Ph.D.s in the United States are awarded in nuclear physics. For these 50 students, the school represents a vibrant way to explore the broad program of nuclear physics research in our country, and learn about the research conducted in the Physics Department here in ��«��Ƶ.

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CU Physicists help reveal secrets of the "perfect fluid" formed in Big Bang

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 06:34:43 +0000

CU Physicists help reveal secrets of the "perfect fluid" formed in Big Bang Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 07/17/2015 - 00:34

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory has succeeded in creating distinct droplets of the quark-gluon plasma, the material that made up the Universe during the very first moments of the Big Bang. "These experiments are revealing the key elements required for creating quark-gluon plasma," said CU physics professor Jamie Nagle, co-spokesperson for the PHENIX experiment at RHIC.

In 2005, scientists at RHIC (pictured right) observed that gold-gold nuclear collisions created a quark-gluon plasma that acts like a "perfect fluid" which flows nearly without resistance. This experiment collides small nuclei, such as deuterium and helium, with gold nuclei, producing distinct droplets of the quark-gluon plasma in order to measure the properties of the perfect fluid. "RHIC is the only accelerator in the world where we can perform such a tightly controlled experiment, colliding particles made of one, two, and three components with the same larger nucleus, gold, all at the same energy," said Nagle. "This is the way to do good basic science—change just one thing at a time, the number of particles in the ion smashing into the gold nucleus, to test for these interesting geometrical effects."

The analysis of the events (pictured right) reveals that the helium-gold collisions exhibit a triangular pattern of flow that is consistent with the creation of three tiny droplets of quark-gluon plasma.

Nagle and physics assistant professor Paul Romatschke (pictured left) proposed this experiment in 2014. Romatschke's theoretical calculation correctly described the behavior of the droplets in the experiment. "The fact that our predictions were confirmed by experiment seems to suggest that hydrodynamic theory is much more robust than was thought just a few years ago. This is very gratifying," said Romatschke.

"This is a pretty definitive measurement," Nagle said. "We are really engineering different shapes of the quark-gluon plasma to manipulate it and see how it behaves.”

View the BNL Press Release

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Quark-Gluon Droplets Discovered at BNL's PHENIX Experiment

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 15:23:40 +0000

Quark-Gluon Droplets Discovered at BNL's PHENIX Experiment Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 12/09/2013 - 08:23

CU Physics Professor Jamie Nagle is a group leader in a new discovery about the quark-gluon plasma. Researchers at the PHENIX detecter at Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider made an unexpected discovery during an experiment that creates a quark-gluon plasma, the type of matter that existed in the first few millionths of a second after the Big Bang! They found that the quark-gluon plasma can exist in droplets far smaller than previously thought. Professor Nagle is the co-spokesperson for the experiment. Assistant Professor Romatschke's theoretical modeling of the relativistic hydrodynamics of the quark-gluon plasma in highlighted in the press release.

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Nuclear Physics

Javier Orjuela-Koop Wins People's Choice Award at Inaugural 3 Minute Thesis Competition

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National Nuclear Physics School 2017 Hosted in ��«����Ƶ

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CU Physicists help reveal secrets of the "perfect fluid" formed in Big Bang

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Quark-Gluon Droplets Discovered at BNL's PHENIX Experiment

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National Nuclear Physics School 2017 Hosted in ��«��Ƶ