"LITTLE BIG BANGS AT THE PHENIX EXPERIMENT AT THE
BROOKHAVEN RELATIVISTIC HEAVY ION COLLIDER"
Theoretical studies of the thermodynamics of strongly
interacting matter
at high temperatures and/or baryon densities unambiguously
predict the
existence of the quark-gluon plasma. In such a state
of matter, which
most likely dominated the Universe 1 microsecond after
the Big Bang,
the hadrons have dissolved into their constituent quarks
and gluons.
The primary goal of the PHENIX experiment at RHIC is
the identification
and study of this new phase of nuclear matter.
During the first data
taking run in Summer 2000 we collected 6 million events
which provide a
good insight into the characteristics of gold ion collisions
at 200GeV.
In my talk, I will present an overview of the first results
from PHENIX.