Physicists from 35 countries and nearly 200 institutions are coming to Knoxville, Tenn., March 30-April 4, for the International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus Collisions, hosted by the能源部的橡树岭国家实验室。
Also known as the Quark Matter conference, the meeting is the premier conference in the field of high-energy nuclear physics, with typically 600 or more attendees. This 21st-in-the-series meeting will be held at the Knoxville Convention Center, where scientists will review and debate the most recent information on quark-gluon matter and related subjects.
"The central object of study is the so-called quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter that last existed in the universe at one microsecond after the Big Bang. The state of matter is so hot that the quarks that make up the protons in the atoms of normal matter can no longer be confined in the cores of atoms," said Glenn Young, director of ORNL's Physics Division and conference chair. "The quark-gluon plasma may exist at the cores of neutron stars in the present-day universe," Young said.
大爆炸之后的最早时刻的主要实验活动正在纽约的布鲁克黑文国家实验室和位于瑞士日内瓦附近的大型强子对撞机。
会议的一个目的是为该领域的新成员提供教育机会，包括研究生，博士后研究人员以及会议的年轻学术和实验室工作人员。会议时间表包括该领域的国际领导人和献给学生的全天讲座，将于3月29日星期日在会议场地举行。
还安排了35次全体讲座和140次平行对话。在整个会议期间，将展出一个海报会议。
该会议由ORNL，田纳西大学，范德比尔特大学，杜克大学，佛罗里达州立大学，北卡罗来纳州立大学和佐治亚州立大学组织。这些机构以及DOE，Brookhaven国家实验室，Los Alamos国家实验室，CERN，国际纯物理和应用物理学联盟，德国的极端物质研究所GSI，Elsevier，美国物理学会和物理研究所提供支持。