A split second after the universe erupted from a single point of light, a mix of subatomic particles—the smallest known units of matter—shot out in every directions, along with the four fundamental forces in the universe: the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity.

Although there were particles of every different kind in this mix, most were quarks and gluons jumbled around in an immensely hot stream called "quark-gluon soup" or "quark-gluon plasma (QGP).

Gluons exist to carry the strong nuclear force. The "weak" nuclear force is responsible for radioactivity. Quarks combine to form ordinary matter, such as protons and neutrons, when the gluons "glue" them together. It took another fraction of a second for the QGP to cool down (or "coalesce"). After this there were no more "free" quarks or gluons; they were all "bound" in ordinary matter.

In August, 2017, researchers used the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland to produce a quark-gluon plasma (QGP). It existed for an extremely small fraction of a second and produced temperatures in the range of 5.5 trillion degrees Kelvin. For comparison: The center of our sun is about 15 million degrees K. They performed this experiment to re-create the conditions in the universe during that first fraction of a second after the Big Bang and to add further evidence that proves the Big Bang.

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