A Liquid Universe

Smashing together lead particles at 99.9999991% the speed of the light, scientists have recreated the first matter that appeared after the Big Bang.

Out of the wreck came a primordial type of matter known as quark-gluon plasma, or QGP. It only lasted a fraction of a second, but for the first time, scientists were able to probe the plasma's liquid-like characteristics — finding it to have less resistance to flow than any other known substance — and determine how it evolved in the first moments in the early universe.

"This [study] shows us the evolution of the QGP and eventually [could] suggest how the early universe evolved in the first microsecond after the Big Bang," said co-author You Zhou, an associate professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

After the Big Bang, the universe was thought to be a soup of energy before it rapidly expanded during a period known as inflation, which allowed the universe to cool enough for matter to form. The first entities thought to emerge were quarks, a fundamental particle, and gluons, which carry the strong force that glues quarks together. As the universe cooled further, these particles formed subatomic particles called hadrons, some of which we know as protons and neutrons.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...