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Original post: Newswise - Drug and Drug Abuse Measuring the Speed of Sound in Dense Nuclear Matter
Physicists have proposed a method to measure the speed of sound characterizing matter created in nuclear collisions. Heavy nuclei consist of hundreds of protons and neutrons, which themselves are composed of quarks and gluons. In heavy-ion collisions, the energy density of matter reaches very high levels, and the nucleons become a quark-gluon plasma. Experimental analyses can reveal properties of the quark-gluon plasma, helping scientists learn about the thermodynamics of dense nuclear matter.