Quarks Leave Fluid Wakes in Primordial Universe Matter
Physicists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider have captured the clearest evidence yet that quark-gluon plasma behaves like a true liquid. The quark-gluon plasma is the scorching-hot matter that filled the newborn universe just microseconds after the Big Bang.
By tracking individual quarks as they blasted through the plasma, researchers observed them leaving behind ripples, splashes, and swirling wakes—behavior strikingly similar to a duck moving through water. This finding suggests that the primordial "soup" is so dense that it can slow speeding quarks and respond collectively as a fluid.
The observation of these fluid-like dynamics provides new insight into the fundamental properties of matter in extreme conditions, deepening our understanding of the early universe's evolution.