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A worldwide team of researchers, including 10 from Texas A&M University, have for the first time created a particle that is believed to have been in existence immediately after the creation of the universe – the so-called “Big Bang” – and it could lead to new questions and answers about some of the basic laws of physics because in essence, it creates a new form of matter.

Researchers Carl Gagliardi, Saskia Mioduszewski, Robert Tribble, Matthew Cervantes, Rory Clarke, Martin Codrington, Pibero Djawotho, James Drachenberg, Ahmed Hamed and Liaoyuan Huo, all affiliated with the Texas A&M Cyclotron Institute, along with numerous researchers from universities and  labs all over the world, have created the anti-hypertriton – a never-before-seen particle – by colliding gold nuclei at extremely high speeds.  Their work is published in the current issue of Science Express.

Using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y., the team used particles of gold and collided them just short of the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). More than 100 million collisions were made to collect the data.

“We know that some new particles of matter were formed immediately after the Big Bang, but they were gone within a millionth of a second or so,” explains Gagliardi.

“By accelerating the gold (gold was selected because it is very heavy) at extremely high speeds, we were able to replicate the conditions right after the Big Bang.  It’s very much like when two cars collide at high speeds – you would have a lot of hot metal.

“At a temperature of about two trillion degrees, which is about 100,000 times hotter than the center of the sun, we were able to produce a new form of matter.”

As this new form of matter evolves, it expands and cools and eventually decays.  When it does so, the majority of it converts back into ordinary matter, but a large amount converts into anti-matter instead, Gagliardi points out.

“This enables us to see things we have never seen before,” Gagliardi adds.

“We found evidence of particles called anti-lambdas bound within the anti-nuclei. The anti-lambda has a lifetime of less than one-billionth of a second, which on a nuclear time scale, is actually a long amount of time. It gives us a framework to make sort of a 3D periodic table of the elements, from matter to anti-matter.   This now gives us a new class of matter to study, one we think should be a mirror image of our world.  But a big question is, how accurate is that mirror?”

Gagliardi says it’s been known that the Big Bang made equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, but over time, something has tripped the balance for life to exist – there is more matter today than anti-matter.

“So why is this?” he asks.

“We may be able to answer these questions in the future.”

Mioduszewski adds, “These new findings give us a large new source of hypernuclei.  They provide us with a new way to study the forces that act inside atomic nuclei, and might teach us about the forces that act in the center of the neutron stars.

“This has opened up a very big door for us.”

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About research at Texas A&M University: As one of the world’s leading research institutions, Texas A&M is in the vanguard in making significant contributions to the storehouse of knowledge, including that of science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M represents an annual investment of more than $582 million, which ranks third nationally for universities without a medical school, and underwrites approximately 3,500 sponsored projects. That research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting in many cases in economic benefits to the state, nation and world.

Contact: Keith Randall, News & Information Services, at (979) 845-4644 or or Carl Gagliardi at (979) 845-1411

Two prominent scientists — one, an experimental physicist and expert on Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity from Stanford University, and the other, a Wolf Prize-winning mathematical physicist from the University of Oxford renowned for his contributions to the theory of non-periodic tilings and the foundations of quantum theory — will visit Texas A&M University next week to present their views of faith, science and society as part of the university’s ninth annual Trotter Endowed Lecture Series.

Francis Everitt, research professor in the W.W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory at Stanford and recipient of the 2005 NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal (highest honor for non-governmental employees), and Sir Roger Penrose, Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Oxford and winner of the Royal Society’s 2008 Copley Medal, will deliver a joint public lecture Thursday (March 11) at 7 p.m. in Rudder Theater. The presentation, which is free and open to the public, will be followed by a reception in Rudder Exhibit Hall.

Everitt, an expert in both space research and physics history, is principal investigator of the Gravity Probe B (GP-B) experiment, a collaboration between Stanford, NASA and Lockheed Martin Corp. that is testing predictions of Einstein’s 1916 theory of gravitation using four ultra-precise gyroscopes that have been orbiting the Earth in a satellite since 2004. He contends that science is explanation but also adventure, discovery, delight, repeated encounters with mystery and — at its best — intense moral discipline. In his talk, “Mystery in Science, Reason in Religion: How the Two Intersect and Overlap,” Everitt will present how mystery and moral discipline permeate both science and religion and how reason affects each in the context of Christian faith.

Penrose originated twistor theory, which seeks to unite Einstein’s general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics, and has made major contributions to many areas of physics and geometry, including non-periodic tilings, which cannot be shifted and still match the original pattern. One such example graces the first-floor atrium area of Texas A&M’s George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy. His talk, “Did the Universe Have a Beginning,” will explore the philosophical implications of conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC), which Penrose offers as an alternative scheme to the prevailing theory that the universe started with a Big Bang.

“Once again, we are very fortunate to have such world-class scientists come to Texas A&M to discuss ideas of such far-reaching interest,” said Dr. H. Joseph Newton, dean of the College of Science.

Everitt obtained his doctorate at the University of London (Imperial College) in 1959 for research under Nobel laureate P.M.S. Blackett. He then spent two years at the University of Pennsylvania working on liquid helium. In 1962, Everitt joined William Fairbank and Leonard Schiff in the Stanford Physics Department as the first full-time research worker on the GP-B experiment. His efforts advanced the state-of-the-art in the areas of cryogenics, magnetics, quantum devices, telescope design, control systems, quartz fabrication techniques, metrology and, most of all, gyroscope technology. His leadership as the principal investigator for GP-B advanced the GP-B program from the concept and technology development stages to the experiment’s launch on April 20, 2004, and its ensuing orbital operations.

A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) since 2006, Everitt has been a member of numerous national and international committees, including the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Committee on Relativity, the NASA Management Operations Working Group (MOWG) in Shuttle Astronomy and the NASA Astrophysics Council. His many awards include the Tyndall Prize in Experimental Physics, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 1997 Marcel Grossmann Award. In addition, he has written extensively on the history of 19th and 20th century physics, including a biography of Maxwell and most recently an article “Kelvin, Maxwell, Einstein, and the Ether: Who was Right about What?”

Penrose earned his bachelor of science in mathematics at University College, London, in 1952 and his doctorate in algebraic geometry at St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1957. In addition to his appointment at Oxford, he has held several teaching and research positions in the United Kingdom and United States. He is a visiting professor at Queen Mary, University of London, and also holds the Francis and Helen Pentz Distinguished Professorship of Physics and Mathematics at Penn State University. Penrose was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1972, knighted in 1994 for services to science, and appointed to the Order of Merit in 2000.
A foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences, Penrose has won numerous awards, including the 1971 Heinemann Prize, the Royal Astronomical Society’s 1975 Eddington Medal (shared with Cambridge theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, for whom Penrose served as faculty adviser), the Royal Society’s 1985 Royal Medal and 2008 Copley Medal, the 1988 Wolf Foundation Prize for Physics (also shared with Hawking), the Albert Einstein Society’s 1990 Albert Einstein Medal, and the London Mathematical Society’s 1991 Naylor Prize and 2004 de Morgan Medal. In addition to holding 14 honorary degrees, Penrose has written many scientific papers and several books, including his most recent, “The Road to Reality.”

The Trotter Prize and Endowed Lecture Series, presented by the College of Science in collaboration with The Dwight Look College of Engineering, seeks to illuminate connections between science and religion, often viewed in academia as non-overlapping if not rival world views. The series was established by Dr. Ide P. Trotter Jr. and Luella H. Trotter with a matching contribution from ExxonMobil Corp. in 2001 to honor Ide P. Trotter Sr., former dean of Texas A&M University’s Graduate School, and to recognize pioneering contributions to the understanding of the role of information, complexity and inference in illuminating the mechanisms and wonder of nature.

For more information on the event, contact Jennifer Holle in the College of Science Dean’s Office at (979) 845-7361.

Learn more about the history of the Trotter Lecture Series and past presenters.

Contact: Shana K. Hutchins, (979) 862-1237

The “Tell Your Story Leadership Forum” at Texas A&M University will present Aggies with what organizers of the program call “the challenge of a lifetime” – to dream and to bring that dream to reality.

Scheduled for 8 p.m. Monday (March in Rudder Theater, the forum will present a select panel of speakers comprised of individuals who have overcome extraordinary odds to realize their goals.

“Our organization began in 2008 and we want to challenge Aggies to follow their dreams,” said Paige Smiley, a senior finance major who heads the forum. “Our organization exists to help students recognize their own passions and ambitions and empower them to follow those passions.”

Smiley, as her name suggests, is a self-described “eternal optimist and an unrestrained dreamer.” The seeds of the “Tell Your Story Leadership Forum” were first planted at a leadership conference she attended during her freshman year. While a student at Texas A&M, Smiley says she has been “lucky enough to experience more than her share of the top-notch leadership opportunities offered at the university.”

“Because of these opportunities, I realized the importance of growing a dream,” she says. “The forum will bring in speakers who have followed their dreams and achieved their goals and I believe it’s important for all of us to hear what they have to say.”

Scheduled speakers are Chris Barbic, an education innovator; John McHale, a technological entrepreneur, and Charlie Engle, an ultra-marathoner and humanitarian.

Barbic is founder and chief executive officer of YES! Prep Schools in Houston and, as such, has challenged the status quo of public education. With more than five campuses and 3,000 students on the wait list, YES! Prep continues to beat the odds with a student body composed of 95 percent minority students, 100 percent of whom are accepted to colleges, including Harvard and Columbia.

McHale is an Ohio businessman “with purpose.” He created several large technology companies that he then sold to major telecommunication and computer companies for a total of more than $1 billion.

“But McHale is more than a corporate genius; he is persistent. In repeating his ability to build a successful company thrice over, he has shown himself to be a man not only of great creativity but of incredible achievement,” Smiley says.

In February 2007, Engle and two teammates became the first people in history to run across the entire Sahara Desert – more than 4,500 miles. He averaged more than 42 miles per day for 111 consecutive days while crossing the most forbidding terrain on Earth. The North Carolina native then got Matt Damon to produce a documentary about him with which he raised over $6 million for clean water in Africa. Why take on such a daring task? Engle says he has devoted himself to raising money for causes he believes in by testing the limits of human endurance.

Tickets for the forum are free and available at the MSC Box Office.

For more information, go to http://tellyourstory.tamu.edu or e-mail tell-your-story@googlegroups.com.

Contact: Tura King, News & Information Services, at 979-845-4670 or tura-king@tamu.edu or Paige Smiley at 214-418-1116 or paigeleesmiley@gmail.com.

For more news about Texas A&M University, go to http://tamunews.tamu.edu.

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