Surprises in the RHIC Data

Abstract

The data from RHIC have produced many unanticipated results. I will describe a few of the surprises that occur in the soft spectra while my colleagues at this conference will summarize the hard spectra. One particularly important discovery is that properties of the initial state have an impact on the final state in relativistic heavy ion collisions. Another important discovery is that the collision zone is opaque to the passage of hadrons and perhaps even partons. And finally, the data tell us very precisely where the colliding systems hadronize on the phase diagram for nuclear matter.