Findings intensify search for new form of matter

UPTON, NY � The latest results from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the world�s most powerful facility for nuclear physics research, strengthen scientists� confidence that RHIC collisions of gold ions have created unusual conditions and that they are on the right path to discover a form of matter called the quark-gluon plasma, believed to have existed in the first microseconds after the birth of the universe. The results will be presented at a special colloquium at the U.S. Department of Energy�s Brookhaven National Laboratory on June 18 at 11 a.m., to coincide with the submission of scientific papers on the results to Physical Review Letters by three of RHIC�s international collaborations.