turbulence graphic (IMAGE)
Caption
As physicists turned the collision energy down at RHIC, they expected to see large event-by-event fluctuations in certain measurements such as net proton production--an effect that's similar to the turbulence an airplane experiences when entering a bank of clouds--as evidence of a "critical point" in the nuclear phase transition. Higher level statistical analyses of the data, including the skew (kurtosis), revealed tantalizing hints of such fluctuations.
Credit
Brookhaven National Laboratory
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