Brookhaven’s 1,000-ton sPHENIX detector proves ready to unlock secrets of the Big Bang

A powerful 1,000-ton particle detector, sPHENIX, has successfully passed an important test, proving it is ready for its primary mission — to study the origins of the universe. The detector, which is located at the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, is designed to precisely measure the aftermath of high-speed particle collisions in order to reconstruct the properties of quark-gluon plasma.

Quark-gluon plasma is a white-hot soup of subatomic particles that is believed to have existed for just a few microseconds after the Big Bang, before cooling and combining to form the protons and neutrons we know today.

To assess the precision and speed of the new particle detector, scientists put it through the standard candle test. They collided gold ions at nearly the speed of light while taking measurements. The results — detailed in the Journal of High Energy Physics — showed that sPHENIX was up to the task, it accurately measure the amount of charged particles produced during the collisions. It even detected that head-on collisions produced 10 times more particles and 100 times more energy than glancing collisions.

It’s as if you sent a new telescope up in space after you’ve spent 10 years building it, and it snaps the first picture. It’s not necessarily a picture of something completely new, but it proves that it’s now ready to start doing new science. — Gunther Roland, a professor of physics at MIT and a member of the sPHENIX Collaboration.

The sPHENIX detector is a next-generation instrument the size of a two-story house, capable of measuring up to 15,000 collisions per second. This speed allows for faster research as rare occurrences will be observed more frequently. Once active, it could help scientists study the properties of the early universe.