Think back to roughly a millionth of a second after the big bang. Matter did not exist as we know it today. Instead, the universe was an intensely hot, dense soup known as quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Quarks make up protons and neutrons, which form atoms, while gluons bind those quarks together. In that initial cosmic phase, these particles were not confined yet. They drifted in a searing plasma until expansion cooled everything down and allowed quarks to condense.
Recreating the Primordial Universe with Light Nuclei
For several years, physicists have recreated this exotic state by smashing heavy elements together at nearly the speed of light inside particle colliders. Lead atoms were long considered the baseline standard for these heavy-ion collisions.
Shattering the Lower Mass Limit at CERN
Now, researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) have successfully generated quark-gluon plasma using light atomic nuclei like oxygen-16 and neon-20, proving that micro big bangs can be created at a fraction of previous size thresholds according to a study in Physical Review Letters.
Scientists produced the substance using oxygen-16 and neon-20 nuclei—both weighing less than a tenth of a lead atom.
“We have pushed the boundary for how small the atomic nuclei can be while still re-creating this primordial matter—what you could call a ‘little big bang.’ We now know more about the fundamental conditions required for matter to transition into this extreme state,” You Zhou, a researcher at the Niels Bohr Institute in the Netherlands and a coauthor of the study, explained in a press release.
Observing Fluid Dynamics on a Subatomic Scale
Despite the dramatically smaller size of these incoming nuclei compared to lead, the high-speed impacts generated distinct signatures matching theoretical models of quark-gluon plasma.
For a fleeting moment, the generated matter flowed collectively like a liquid drop before cooling off and condensing back into ordinary particles.
Decoding the Evolution of Cosmic Matter
“Hopefully, this will help us better understand how the plasma behaved during the first moments of the universe—and how it later evolved into the forms of matter that everything around us is made of,” Zhou added.
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