Read more: Click here to read the original, longer version of this story
A PERFECT liquid could teach us a thing or two about the early universe. This form of matter is now being created at the Large Hadron Collider, which, on 7 November, began smashing lead ions head-on, a shift from its usual proton-proton collisions.
These ion collisions produce fireballs or “mini big bangs”. At temperatures of up to 10 trillion °C, these disintegrate the ions’ protons and neutrons into a plasma of quarks and gluons. This is the state of matter that filled the very early universe.…
