The new NICA accelerator in Dubna will reveal the secrets of the beginning of the universe

The first session of particle acceleration at the NICA complex marked the beginning of a cycle of research that will reveal the fundamental secrets of the universe. For example, how the universe is formed from the "bricks" of quarks and gluons, as well as how the strong interactions are arranged — the most powerful and most mysterious forces of nature that bind particles inside the nucleus and are responsible for the formation of almost all matter in the universe. Vladimir Kekelidze, Vice Director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), told Izvestia about this.

"The work at NICA will not only intensify research already underway in the world, but also expand it into areas that are not available in global research centers. For example, these are regions of extreme states of nuclear matter — its maximum possible density, existing only in the bowels of neutron stars," he explained.

According to him, the NICA project program was formed after a broad international discussion, during which truly unique tasks were identified for the installation.

Kekelidze clarified that NICA includes an accelerator complex, detectors, engineering and IT infrastructure, which are located in dozens of buildings. The complex consists of several ion sources, two linear accelerators, two cyclic superconducting accelerators (with a perimeter of about a quarter of a kilometer) and a number of beam transportation channels. The top of the complex is the collider (an installation where particles collide).

Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:

Ion and she: secrets of the beginning of the Universe will allow the discovery of the new NICA accelerator in Dubna