US lab reaches Big Bang heat of four trillion degrees Celsius

US physicists have created matter at around four trillion degrees Celsius, the hottest temperature ever reached in a laboratory, simulating the quark soup that scientists believe existed at the universes birth.
A spokesman for the Department of Energy lab where the record-breaking temperature was reached said the effect was achieved by slamming together gold ions traveling at nearly the speed of light inside the Brookhaven National Laboratorys Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) - an atom smasher with a 2.4-mile (3.8-kilometer) circumference. The ultra-high temperature is higher than that needed to melt protons and neutrons into a plasma of quarks and gluons, the substance that filled the universe a few microseconds after it came into existence 13.7 billion years ago, according to the spokesperson.
The plasma of four trillion degrees Celsius (7.2 trillion degrees Fahrenheit) - 250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun - existed for only a few microseconds after the birth of the universe. It quickly cooled and condensed to form the protons and neutrons that make up everything from individual atoms to stars, planets and people, Brookhaven explained on its website. The temperature of hot matter is measured by looking at the color, or energy distribution, of light emitted from it - similar to the way in which one can tell that an iron rod is hot by looking at its glow. Telegraph