The Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research FAIR Cosmic Matter in the Laboratory

Cosmic matter in the laboratory - a broad spectrum of unprecedented fore-front research becomes available at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research, FAIR. The new facility will be constructed within the next seven years adjacent to the existing accelerator complex of the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research at Darmstadt/Germany. On October 4th, 2010, nine countries signed the international agreement on the construction of FAIR which will start in 2012. First beam will be delivered in 2017/2018 providing worldwide unique accelerator and experimental facilities. This will open the way for a large variety of experiments in hadron, nuclear, atomic and plasma physics as well as applied sciences which will be briefly described in this article. A few more details will be given on heavy-ion collisions providing a tool to study strongly interacting matter under extreme conditions.