Scientists have recreated the first substance that appeared after the Big Bang at the Large Hadron Collider. They achieved this by breaking lead particles at 99.9999991% the speed of light.
According to modern concepts of the Big Bang theory, the currently observed Universe arose 13.799 ± 0.021 billion years ago from some initial singular state and since then has been continuously expanding and cooling.
After the Big Bang, a primitive type of matter appeared, known as quark-gluon plasma, or QGP (quark-gluon plasma).
By itself, quark-gluon plasma is an aggregate state of matter in high-energy physics and elementary particles, in which hadronic matter passes into a state similar to the state in which electrons and ions are in ordinary plasma. It is preceded by the state of the glazma. Consists of quarks, antiquarks and gluons.
The emergence of QGP lasted only a split second, and for the first time scientists were able to investigate the characteristics of this liquid.
The new study shows the evolution of QGP and ultimately shows how the early universe evolved in the first microsecond after the Big Bang, the study authors explain.
After the Big Bang, the universe was considered a bunch of energy before it expanded rapidly. This allowed it to cool enough for the formation of matter. The first particles to appear in the Universe were quarks and gluons, which “glued” them together. The result is a quark-gluon plasma. As the universe cooled further, it formed subatomic particles – hadrons. Some of these are known today as protons and neutrons.
By smashing lead atomic nuclei at 99.9999991% of the speed of light, scientists have created QGP at the Large Hadron Collider. In the course of the experiment, physicists discovered that quark-gluon plasma is an ideal liquid. This means that it has almost no viscosity or resistance to flow, and also changes shape over time, unlike other forms of matter.
