This strange primordial stew was cooked up by boldly colliding lead particles traveling at 99.9999991% the speed of the light. For the first time, scientists were able to investigate the cosmic goo to penetrate the mysteries of its temporary liquid form.
Officially known as quark-gluon plasma (QGP), the characteristics of this weird matter barely lasted a fraction of a second, and scientists discovered that it displayed far less resistance to flow than any other substance known to humankind. Its existence replicates the method by which the QGP was born in the wee hours of the dawn of the universe.
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Smashing together lead particles at 99.9999991 percent the speed of light, scientists have recreated the first matter that appeared after the Big Bang.
Physicists from the ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have developed a new technique that opens a door to high-precision studies of the dynamics of the strong force between unstable hadrons.
An artist’s impression of the interaction between Omega (Ω) hyperon (left) and a proton (right). Image credit: Daniel Dominguez.
Hadrons are composite particles made of two or three quarks bound together by the strong interaction, which is mediated by gluons.
This interaction also acts between hadrons, binding nucleons (protons and neutrons) together inside atomic nuclei.
One of the biggest challenges in nuclear physics today is understanding the strong interaction between hadrons with different quark content from first principles, that is, starting from the strong interaction between the hadrons’ constituent quarks and gluons.