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Relativistic Heavy-Ions, a probe to for the Quark-Gluon Plasma(pdf here) Jun Takahashi (Unicamp, Brazil) Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions provide a rich environment to study the strongly interacting matter in extreme conditions of energy density and high temperature. It is expected that in these conditions, a phase transition from ordinary hadronic matter to a plasma of deconfined quarks and gluons will take place. In search for signatures of this Quark-Gluon Plasma, and to probe its characteristics, four experiments have started taking data in 2001 at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory, NY. Now, after five years of operation, RHIC experiments have started building a consistent and clear picture of the ultra-hot, super-dense, excited state formed in these collisions. Measurements of different observables seem to indicate that the system formed has partonic degrees of freedom, hence, suggesting that indeed a deconfinement has occurred. Furthermore, data analysis indicates that there is strong collective behavior, but surprisingly, the system seems to expand more like a liquid rather than an ideal gas. A summary of the main RHIC results that shows this picture will be shown and discussed. In the context of these measurements, some expectations of the ALICE experiment at the LHC that will collide heavy nuclei at much higher energies will also be discussed.