CERN Experiments Detect Signs of the Universe’s Primordial Matter

CERN’s LHC experiments ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb found new evidence that even light-ion collisions can briefly create quark-gluon plasma (QGP).

In oxygen-oxygen and neon-neon collisions, they observed QGP-like signals such as jet imbalance, charged-particle suppression, and stronger parton energy loss.

The effects grew more pronounced in more central collisions and in heavier systems, challenging the idea that QGP only forms in very heavy-ion collisions.

The findings expand the conditions under which physicists can study matter from the first microseconds after the Big Bang.