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A PERFECT liquid could teach us a thing or two about the early universe. This form of matter is now being created at the Large Hadron Collider, which, on 7 November, began smashing lead ions head-on, a shift from its usual proton-proton collisions.
These ion collisions produce fireballs or 鈥渕ini big bangs鈥�. At temperatures of up to 10 trillion 掳C, these disintegrate the ions鈥� protons and neutrons into a plasma of quarks and gluons. This is the state of matter that filled the very early universe.
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鈥淧rotons and neutrons disintegrate to produce the state of matter that filled the early universe鈥�
Physicists at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, which has also created quark-gluon plasmas, have shown that these are 鈥減erfect鈥�, or low-viscosity, liquids, not gases as expected.
The LHC鈥檚 287-teraelectronvolt beam means its collisions pack . Expect more surprises.