March 12, 2004

Smashing Gold

By RICHARD MONASTERSKY

Physicists reach back toward the Big Bang to study how matter is built

Multimedia: An animation showing gold nuclei colliding (Requires Flash, available free at the Macromedia Web site.) By RICHARD MONASTERSKY

Until the end of this month, a place on Long Island can claim the title as "the hottest spot in the universe."

At a particle collider on the campus of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, two beams of gold nuclei are crashing together continuously at close to the

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