Maxim Chernodub

Career Beginnings and degrees

Chernodub attended Lycée 145 in Kyiv from 1980 to 1990. He earned a bachelor's degree and a Master of Science, at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, in 1993 and 1996, respectively, and a Ph.D. at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP) in Moscow, in 1999. In 2007, there followed his habilitation at the ITEP.

Work as a scientist

Chernodub worked for the ITEP (1994–2001, 2003–2006, 2007–2008) and for the Japanese Kanazawa (2001–2003) and Hiroshima University (2006–2007). Since 2008, he holds a permanent position as a researcher for the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), at the Laboratoire de mathématiques et physique théorique of the University of Tours. They share the same quantum state and form a condensate, flowing together as one particle. The condensed rho mesons may carry electric current without resistance along the magnetic field lines. perhaps billions of degrees. Chernodub sees a possible explanation of his results in the quarks and antiquarks constituting the rho mesons being forced to move only along the magnetic field lines, which would render the rho mesons far more stable.

In the realm of astrophysics, Chernodub's calculations could mean that periods of vacuum-superconductivity in the early days of the universe had caused the emergence of the large-scale magnetic fields out in space, which are so far mysterious. At present, magnetic fields of 1016 T are by far not reached in the known universe.

Possible measurability at ion colliders

Chernodub believes that his prediction could be proven at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva or at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) of Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. Ions colliding at these particle accelerators could create a magnetic field of almost the required strength in a "near miss", for perhaps one yoctosecond. Chernodub expects that vacuum superconductivity would, if it exists, leave a trace of charged rho mesons at the accelerators.