isobar collisions at RHIC (IMAGE)

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory

isobar collisions at RHIC

Caption

Physicists compared collisions of two different sets of isobars, which are ions that have the same overall mass but different numbers of protons—zirconium (96Zr), with 40 protons, and ruthenium (96Ru) with 44 protons. The higher proton number (and thus electric charge) in ruthenium should generate a stronger magnetic field during collisions than zirconium (indicated by size of gray arrows). Scientists expected the stronger magnetic field of ruthenium collisions to result in greater separation of charged particles emerging from those collisions than seen in zirconium collisions.

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Brookhaven National Laboratory

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