Ever wondered how the Universe was like in the beginning? What made it the way it is today? Well, we finally got an answer to that, and it looks like nothing we’ve imagined.
Scientists have recreated the Universe’s first state of matter right after the Big Bang and got a glimpse of what it was like initially. Things were perfect liquid.
Here is what you need to know.
Plasma Matter and How the Early Universe Evolved
Crushing some lead particles at 99.9999991 % the speed of light, and you might finally understand the first matter of the Universe.
That’s what a team of scientists did, and they found some genuinely intriguing stuff.
How they did it
The team needed the world’s biggest atom smasher dubbed the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) from Geneva, Switzerland, some heavy atomic nuclei, and patience.
By using that, scientists succeeding in creating a tiny fireball that can melt particles into their initial forms, but only for a fraction of a second. Of course, they needed some new computer simulations along with more data from a device called ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment).
As previously mentioned, what they found is genuinely intriguing.
The results
The team got a primordial type of matter known as”quark-gluon plasms,” or QGP, which is more like a soupy stew. And even if it lasted just for a fraction of a second, we finally got it: the first matter that appeared right after the Big Bang.
Furthermore, the scientists examined the plasma’s liquid-like features and found even more intriguing stuff. For instance, the plasma is apparently less resistant to flow compared to any other substance.
You Zhou is the co-author of the new study and an associate professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. He discussed the importance of the discovery, saying:
“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.”
This discovery helps scientists understand better what the Universe was like initially. They hope to unveil more data as the accelerator is upgraded, and a brand-new one will soon be available online.