Quantum Chromodynamics at Five Trillion Degrees Kelvin

At about 10^-5 seconds after the big bang, the then rapidly cooling universe 
went through a phase transition from a state of matter called a quark gluon 
plasma (QGP) to the state of matter we see today, which is called hadronic matter.  
The temperature of the universe when this occurred was approximately two trillion 
degrees Kelvin, which is over one million times hotter than the sun.  As a consequence, 
understanding the earliest moments after the big bang and the formation of matter 
as we know it requires a firm understanding of high temperature quantum chromodynamics (QCD).  
In this colloquium, Dr. Strickland will introduce the theory of QCD and discuss why 
physicists expect there to be a phase transition from hadronic matter to a QGP at 
such insanely high temperatures.  He will also present results from ongoing experiments 
at Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and CERN's Large 
Hadron Collider where they are now producing temperatures on the order of five 
trillion degrees Kelvin by colliding heavy nuclei at ultrarelativistic speeds.