Quark-gluon plasma (QGP) a perfect liquid and the 1st matter of the universe

Scientists successfully recreated the matter that appeared firstly after the Big Bang. For this, lead particles are smashed together at the speed of  99.9999991% the speed of the light.

Thus a standard type of matter specifically known as a Quark-gluon plasma or QGP came out of the wreck. But that matter disappeared after fractions of seconds. For The first time, scientists became able to investigate plasma having liquid-like characteristics. They found that it has less resistance to flow than any other substance and it had been also identified how it evolved firstly just after the Big Bang.

 You Zhou, an associate professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, the University of Copenhagen in Denmark says,

“This study shows us the evolution of QGP and it can suggest to us how the universe evolved in the first microseconds after the Big Bang.”

The universe was considered a soup of energy after the Big Bang explosion before it quickly expanded during a period called inflation. This allows the universe to cool down enough for matter to form. The matters that considered emerging firstly were quarks and gluons having the strong forces that made quarks glued together. After the further cooling of the universe, these particles formed subatomic particles called hadrons. Some of which are also called protons and neutrons.

Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on the border of Geneva, in Switzerland, is the world’s largest atom smasher where scientists created this soupy stew. Scientists can develop a fireball by smashing heavy atomic nuclei together. This could melt particles into their primordial forms in a fraction of seconds.

Scientists thought that they first created Quark-gluon plasma (QGP) in 2000, but actually, it was the first time they can investigate the characteristics of its liquid nature in detail as reported online on May 11, 2021, in the journal Physics Letters B. As plasma lasts only for 10^-23 seconds, scientists used new computer simulations with the data they collected from an instrument called ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) in the accelerator. They tried to identify different properties of matter and how it gets changed between the time when it formed and when it condensed into hadrons. 

Scientists found that Quark-gluon plasma (QGP) was a perfect liquid. Thus had almost no viscosity. This matter was also able to change its shape over time unlike other forms of matter. These findings helped scientists to understand the universe’s conditions a few moments after the big bang. Scientists are optimistic to get more details about QGP as an accelerator to get upgraded and also they may axle to understand how the quarks and gluons are arranged into protons and neutrons.