Quark

Further Information

'Little Bang' re-creates cosmic soup

Scientists at CERN have produced a "quark-gluon" soup or plasma. By studying its properties, and the laws it obeys, scientists will learn more about how the Universe developed during one of its formative phases.

A new state of matter

13 Feb 2000
A series of experiments using CERN's lead beam have presented compelling evidence for the existence of a new state of matter 20 times denser than nuclear matter in which quarks, instead of being bound up into more complex particles such as protons and neutrons, are liberated to roam freely. Such a state must have existed just a few microseconds after the Big Bang, before the formation of particles of matter as we know them today. Physicists at CERN have recreated those conditions by smashing lead nuclei into each other, to reach temperatures over 100 000 times as hot as the centre of the sun, and energy densities twenty times that of ordinary nuclear matter.

A Tour of the Subatomic Zoo : A Guide to Particle Physics

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Cindy Schwarz, Sheldon Glashow
December 1996

The Particle Garden : Our Universe As Understood by Particle Physicists

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Gordon Kane, Heather Mimnaugh
July 1996
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