Barbara Jacak
Stony Brook

Raising nuclear matter to high energy density can recreate the conditions which existed immediately following the Big Bang. This kind of matter is expected to be a plasma of quarks and gluons, which are not confined into hadrons as they are in the everyday world. RHIC collides heavy ions at high energy to allow study of this kind of matter in the laboratory. Experimental observables to probe the hot and dense early stage of the collision will be described. I will show first results from Au + Au collisions at center of mass energy of 130 GeV/nucleon. Thousands of particles are created and undergo an explosive expansion, as we surmise the early universe did. >