Quark-Gluon Plasma Discovery at Large Hadron Collider

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Researchers working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) found the smallest known droplet of Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) that still flows like a liquid.
This surprising finding challenges current theories about how matter behaves at the subatomic scale.

Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) is an extremely hot phase of matter formed by quarks and gluons, which are the fundamental building blocks of matter.
This super-dense state of matter existed during the first few millionths of a second after the Big Bang, long before protons and neutrons formed.
QGP ranks among the hottest substances ever created, with temperatures reaching trillions of degrees Celsius.
Scientists create this plasma by smashing atomic nuclei together at very high speeds inside the LHC.
Researchers previously observed QGP mostly in collisions involving heavy elements like lead.

Normal fluids like water contain quadrillions of molecules, but QGP contains only thousands of subatomic particles.
Despite containing so few particles, QGP behaves like a near-perfect fluid with clear viscosity and flow instead of acting like a gas.
Scientists recently collided oxygen nuclei inside the LHC and proved that this much smaller system could create QGP.
Oxygen acts as an important middle ground between light protons and heavy lead nuclei.
This oxygen experiment helps researchers find the exact tipping point where independent particles turn into a collective fluid.

Scientists detected the smallest-ever QGP droplet that retains liquid-like flow instead of gas-like behavior.
They noticed that particles moving through QGP lose energy, which proves that the substance acts as a dense fluid.
This major discovery shows scientists how matter shifts from a gas-like state to a liquid-like state at the smallest scales.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) sits at the CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, making it the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
The machine features a 27-kilometre underground ring of superconducting magnets that accelerates proton or ion beams to near-light speed before crashing them together.
These high-energy crashes recreate the physical environment that existed right after the Big Bang, letting physicists study subatomic interactions.
The LHC is most famous for helping confirm the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, the particle that gives mass to other particles.
It continues exploring cosmic mysteries like dark matter, antimatter, and exotic states of matter like quark-gluon plasma.
Under a 1996 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE)-CERN protocol, India became part of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project by supplying hardware, software, and expert manpower.