Universal Strangeness Production in Hadronic and Nuclear Collisions

We show that strangeness suppression in hadronic and nuclear collisions is fully determined by the initial energy density of the collision. The suppression factor gamma(s)(s), with root s denoting the collision energy, can be expressed as a universal function of the initial energy density is an element of(0)(s), and the resulting pattern is in excellent agreement with data from p-p, p-Pb, Cu-Cu, Au-Au and Pb-Pb data over a wide range of energies and for different centralities.