The idea that the parton system created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions (i) emerges in a state with transverse momenta close to thermodynamic equilibrium and (ii) its evolution at early times is dominated by the 2-dimensional (transverse) hydrodynamics is investigated and shown to be consistent with data. It is argued that this mechanism may help to solve the Hanbury Brown-Twiss (HBT) puzzle and the problem of early equilibration.

Cracovie