Kent State physicists have produced an exact solution to the Boltzmann equation as it applies to the Big Bang and quark-gluon plasma. It is an exceedingly rare event that a physicist produces an exact solution to any theoretical equation. Dr. Michael Strickland, associate professor of physics at Kent State University, and colleagues are the first to produce an exact solution to the Boltzmann equation. The development was reported in the Kent State.
Exact solutions to physics equations are hard to come by because the medium that physicists work in is extremely complex and is constantly being adapted by new discoveries. The original concept was developed by Ludwig Boltzmann in 1872 to describe the thermodynamics of fluids and gases. The equation is a useful description of how the universe is expanding as well as explains much of the data that has been produced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.
The solved equation agrees with theory and predicts a universe that is expanding both longitudinally and radially at velocities that are realistic. The solution explains how a quark-gluon plasma that was produced immediately after the Big Bang could move through space and collide to produce molecules and eventually stars and planets. Physics can often be slow and it has only taken 142 years to solve Boltzmann’s equation. That is not too long compared with the 13.8 billion year age of the universe.
An exact solution for Boltzmann’s equation will provide new insights into the huge body of data created by experiments at CERN. The restart of the experiments at CERN may be modified by the new knowledge. Unlike the first start of the LHC at CERN, no one is predicting that a black hole will swallow the Earth when the facility starts work again.
