Collisions of oxygen atoms at CERN recreate state of primordial matter

Physicists at CERN have found new evidence that relatively small atomic collisions can generate quark-gluon plasma, an exotic state of matter that existed moments after the Big Bang. ScienceDaily and Science Daily reported that all four major research collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider, ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb, detected signs of this primordial substance during collisions involving oxygen. Quark-gluon plasma forms at temperatures exceeding 100,000 times hotter than the center of the Sun, causing ordinary particles to melt apart. [1][2]

The findings occurred one year after the first oxygen collisions took place at the facility, ScienceDaily reported. Previously, as FTMQ Science reported earlier, high-speed oxygen collisions were observed at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider STAR experiment, showing that primordial matter forms in smaller collisions than previously believed. Earlier research at the Large Hadron Collider had also observed individual quarks creating wakes and liquid-like ripples within the plasma state. [1][7][8]

The Large Hadron Collider is the largest and highest-energy particle accelerator in the world. It is built inside a 27-kilometre tunnel located up to 175 metres beneath the France, Switzerland border near Geneva. Over 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities across more than 100 countries collaborated on its construction, which took place between 1998 and 2008 under the European Organization for Nuclear Research. [3]

In Big Bang cosmological theory, the universe expanded from an initial state of extremely high density and temperature around 13.787 billion years ago. The discovery demonstrates that the extreme physical conditions required to form primordial plasma can emerge from smaller system interactions than physicists originally anticipated. [1][4]