Scientists Recreate Primordial Matter from Big Bang at Lower Energies

Scientists have successfully recreated a primordial state of matter, known as quark-gluon plasma, by colliding oxygen nuclei at nearly the speed of light. This exotic substance, which existed at the dawn of the universe, was found to form in smaller, lower-energy collisions than previously demonstrated, challenging existing assumptions about early-universe physics. The results, from experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), establish a new lower boundary for the conditions required to produce quark-gluon plasma.