The NY Times reports that the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC, had been able to "briefly distort the laws of physics, providing the first laboratory demonstration of the kind of process that scientists suspect has shaped cosmic history".

The RHIC is a smaller brother to the LHC in Geneva, and is looking for evidence of how the laws of physics were broken during the big bang. This is all about symmetry, and how "the laws of physics remain unchanged if we view nature in a mirror".

Parity, the idea that the laws of physics are the same when left and right are switched, as in a mirror reflection, is one of the most fundamental symmetries of space-time as we know it. Physicists were surprised to discover in 1956, however, that parity is not obeyed by all the laws of nature after all. The universe is slightly lopsided in this regard. The so-called weak force, which governs some radioactive decays, seems to be left-handed, causing neutrinos, the ghostlike elementary particles that are governed by that force, to spin clockwise, when viewed oncoming, but never counterclockwise.

It's all a bit sinister if you ask me.

But with the RHIC being a lot smaller than the LHC, it once again proves that size is not everything,