Scientists create matter that filled the universe in its earliest moments
The plasma was around when the universe was still too hot to even form atoms
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Your support makes all the difference.Researchers have recreated the tiny drops of matter that once filled the universe.
The strange drips of matter form into three shapes: circles, ellipses and triangles.
By smashing protons and neutrons into each other, the scientists were able to recreate the matter that existed at the very beginnings of the universe, when it was still too hot for atoms to form.
Their new study focuses on a strange liquid-like state of matter known as quark gluon plasma. Once, that material filled the entire universe, scientists think – during the first few microseconds after the Big Bang, before there were atoms.
The researchers found they were able to generate droplets of that strange matter, and it expanded to form into three separate geometric patterns.
"Our experimental result has brought us much closer to answering the question of what is the smallest amount of early universe matter that can exist," said Jamie Nagle from the University of Colorado at Boulder, one of the many researchers who contributed towards the experiment.
Scientists first began research on this strange matter in 2000, when they smashed pieces of gold atoms together and threw out temperatures that were trillions of degrees Celsius. In the incredibly hot soup that it generated, the particles that make up all protons and neutrons broke apart and began to flow, suggesting that generating the new kinds of matter would be possible.
Researchers developed that technique so that they could be made more precisely, generating the quark gluon plasma by smashing together only two protons – something that scientists didn't think was possible.
They found that if you expanded those experiments you could push the droplets into each other, which formed exactly the kinds of unusual shapes that scientists were predicting.
"Imagine that you have two droplets that are expanding into a vacuum," said Nagle. "If the two droplets are really close together, then as they're expanding out, they run into each other and push against each other, and that's what creates this pattern."
Scientists hope to use the findings to explore how the quark gluon plasma – when it first arrived, in the earliest miliseconds of the universe – quickly cooled and became the first atoms ever to exist.
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