New results from a particle collider suggest that the universe behaved like a liquid in its earliest moments, not the fiery gas that was thought to have pervaded the first microseconds of existence, AP reported.
By revising physicists’ concept of the early universe, the new discovery offers opportunities to better learn how subatomic particles interact at the most fundamental level. It may also reveal intriguing parallels between gravity and the force that holds atomic nuclei together, physicists said Monday at a Tampa, Fla., meeting of the American Physical Society.
“There are a lot of exciting questions,“ said Sam Aronson, associate director for high energy and nuclear physics at Brookhaven National Laboratory, which is located on Long Island about 65 miles east of New York city.
Between 2000 and 2003 the lab’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, known as RHIC, repeatedly smashed the nuclei of gold atoms together with such force that their energy briefly generated trillion-degree temperatures. Physicists think of the collider as a time machine, because those extreme temperature conditions last prevailed in the universe less than 100 millionths of a second after the big bang.
Everything was so hot then that quarks and gluons, which are now almost inextricably bound into the protons and neutrons inside atomic nuclei, were thought to have flown around like BBs in a blender.
But by reproducing the conditions of the early universe, RHIC has shown that unconstrained quarks and gluons don’t fly away in all directions so much as squirt out in streams.
“The matter that we’ve formed behaves like a very nearly perfect liquid,“ Aronson said.
When physicists talk about a perfect liquid, they don’t mean the best glass of champagne they ever tasted. The word “perfect“ refers to the liquid’s viscosity, a friction-like property that affects a fluid’s ability to flow and the resistance to objects trying to swim through it. Honey has a high viscosity; water’s viscosity is low. A perfect liquid has no viscosity at all, which is impossible in reality but useful for theoretical discussions.
Theoretical physicists have recently proposed that material swallowed by black holes might also have extremely low viscosity. That notion, based on a branch of mathematical physics known as string theory, has led some physicists to hypothesize that there might be a deeper connection between what happens in a black hole and what goes on when two gold nuclei collide at RHIC.

Some of Albert Einstein most important theories have launched some of our most precise and practical technologies.

Albert Einstein devoted his life to what he called “thought experiments“ to determine the laws governing nature from the inside of the atom to the borders of the universe, CNN.com reported.
Still, some of his most important theories have launched some of our most precise and practical technologies.
Global positioning systems: People use GPS receivers linked to orbiting satellites to pin down their physical locations to within about 50 feet, whether they are lost in the woods or driving in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Satellites orbit at faster velocities, so their onboard clocks run microseconds slower than clocks on Earth. GPS devices contain correction factors based on Einstein’s relativity principles.
Lasers: These are light sources made when an electric current excites atoms in a gas-filled glass chamber. These excited atoms emit photons, which in turn induce other excited atoms to emit photons. Some photons leak out, forming a coherent light beam. Einstein set the stage in 1917 with his paper, “On the Quantum Theory of Radiation.“ Lasers are used in everything from DVD players to aircraft gyroscopes and precision guidance systems for medical instruments, cutting tools and weapons.
Einstein described how light consists of tiny particles called photons. Light falling on metal will discharge electrons. The light’s color will determine how energetic this reaction will be. This photoelectric effect, for which Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize, is the underpinning of solar cells, automatic lights, cameras and photocopiers. It also led to the photomultiplier tube in video cameras and astronomical instruments.
Einstein co-designed a refrigerator that relied on electromagnetic pumps and did not leak toxic coolants. It never made it into homes, but the design still cools some nuclear reactors. The advent of atomic weapons and atomic power is rooted in Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2. It showed how a small bit of matter can be converted to powerful amounts of energy.

People who are happier in their daily lives have healthier levels of key body chemicals than those who muster few positive feelings, a new study suggests. This means happier people may have healthier hearts and cardiovascular systems, possibly cutting their risk of diseases like diabetes, newscientist.com reported.
Previous studies have shown that depression is associated with health problems compared to average emotional states. But few studies have looked at the effects of positive moods on health. Now, researchers at University College London, UK, have linked everyday happiness with healthier levels of important body chemicals, such as the stress hormone cortisol.
“This study showed that whether people are happy or less happy in their everyday lives appears to have important effects on the markers of biological function known to be associated with disease,“ says clinical psychologist Jane Wardle, one of the research team. “Perhaps laughter is the best medicine,“ she adds.
“This is the best data to date that associates positive emotional feelings with good effects on your health,“ says Carol Shively, at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, US. “We usually concentrate on things that are either bad or wrong, rather than good or right.“
The team studied 216 middle-aged men and women living in London, UK, who are part of the ongoing “Whitehall II“ study of thousands of civil servants, led by Michael Marmot.
This subset was asked to rate how happy they had been feeling in the last five minutes at about 33 points during their working or leisure days. At these points, their heart rates and blood pressures were also measured by an automated system.