Recent results from relativistic heavy ion collisions

The Standard Model predicts that at sufficiently high temperature and/or baryon density, nuclear matter will undergo a deconfinement and chiral phase transition to a state of nearly free quarks and gluons, the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). Access to this state in the laboratory is possible only through high energy collisions of large nuclei. Studies of relativistic heavy ion collisions using fixed targets and heavy beams of 10 GeV/c and 160 GeV/c have been ongoing for several years. I will present a brief summary of recent experimental results. copyright 1997 American Institute of Physics