What does quark-gluon plasma have in common with tap water?

Quark-gluon plasma is a state of matter that formed shortly, very shortly, after the big bang. At one time filling the universe, scientists describe quark-gluon plasma as being similar to tap water, but only in the manner that such matter flows. Incredibly hot upon its emergence, it swiftly cooled and began forming the early building blocks of the universe.

As of 2026, 75 of the 86 particles discovered by the Large Hadron Collider have been found by the LHCb experiment—a detector that explores the decay of particles made of beauty and charm quarks.

The hypothetical matter that neutron stars' cores may contain, including strange quarks

Models of the extreme pressures and energies in neutron stars suggest conditions resembling those believed to have existed within a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. In these environments, the quarks that make up protons and neutrons in trios may instead form pairs that combine to form one quantum object. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

At CERN's Antimatter Factory, researchers create and guide antiprotons and antielectrons together to form antihydrogen, and all these antiparticles are analyzed to help scientists study the behavior of antimatter.

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second.

Once called 'aces,' quarks are fundamental pieces of matter that combine to create over 100 known composite particles, including the proton and neutron.

Some particles that mediate fundamental forces in nature are their own antiparticles, such as photons—particles of light and mediators of the electromagnetic force.

The Higgs boson is a quanta, or discrete piece, of the Higgs field, which gives elementary particles, such as quarks and electrons, mass as they travel through it.

Quarks are elementary particles that come in six varieties and combine together to form larger, composite particles, such as the proton and the neutron.

Antimatter particles possess the same mass and spin as their normal particle counterparts, but possess an opposite charge and transform into pure energy upon colliding with normal matter.

At the Large Hadron Collider, scientists have transformed lead into gold—a process known as chrysopoeia, which alchemists sought for centuries.

Plasma is the most abundant form of visible matter in the universe

When electrons are stripped from neutral atoms as a result of high-energy interactions, such as lightning strikes, the atoms become positively charged ions. The mix of these ions and negatively charged electrons, which are too energetic to recombine, is extremely electrically conductive and affected by magnetic fields.

Antimatter's rarity across the cosmos is one of the biggest problems in modern physics because the high-energy environment of the early universe should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter.

Smaller than atoms—what are quarks?

One of humanity’s eternal questions surrounds what we are fundamentally made of. Many ancient philosophies believed in a set of classical elements: from water, air, fire and earth of ancient Greeks; to…

The strong nuclear force, which keeps atomic nuclei intact, is mediated by gluons—massless particles that bind together the quarks that make up protons and neutrons.

Emergent quantum phenomena can produce nonfundamental quasiparticles

While physicists have discovered new particles by colliding known ones at high speeds, placing known particles in extreme environments or configurations can allow quantum mechanics to produce bizarre behaviors, making them seem like new types of matter.

Axions, a hypothetical subatomic particle, are a leading dark matter candidate

Among the possibilities for what makes up dark matter, some physicists champion axions, which could clump into galaxy-scale quantum states. These states would act as massive, unified superparticles that could explain the observational evidence for the universe's missing matter.

In 1997, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory identified 'positron geysers'—fountains of antimatter particles—emerging from near the center of the Milky Way.

If particle accelerators did create black holes by packing tremendous energy into a small volume, then trillions would be created in Earth's atmosphere daily by cosmic rays.

Antimatter was discovered by examining debris from collisions between atmospheric gases and cosmic rays—high-energy matter particles from space.

It may be possible to create dark matter in particle accelerators

In high-energy collisions, exotic forms of matter can be produced by directly converting energy into mass according to *E = mc*². Even though a dark matter particle would not be directly observable, its creation would result in unaccounted-for mass, which can be compared to potential dark matter candidates for indirect detection.

View a ranking of the masses of fundamental particles, from the massless photon to the top quark, and a timeline of their discoveries.

How a quantum quirk allowed neutral atoms to form soon after the Big Bang

At the beginning of the universe, high-energy photons prevented atomic nuclei from combining with electrons to form neutral atoms. Rather than waiting for the universe to expand and cool completely, a rare quantum phenomenon—a two-photon transition—allowed neutral hydrogen atoms to form sooner, expediting the formation of stars, planets, and life.

After photons—particles of light—neutrinos are the most abundant particles in the universe.

As of 2025, LUX-ZEPLIN is the world's most sensitive dark matter experiment, which is designed to indirectly detect a potential candidate for the invisible form of matter.

Particle accelerators propel matter toward small targets at high speed

Devices like cathode-ray tube televisions were once basic particle accelerators, but modern ones, such as the Large Hadron Collider, use massive magnetic fields and circular tunnels to achieve energies high enough to recreate the conditions just after the big bang.

Antimatter was predicted to exist four years before it was observed, though the mathematics responsible for the prediction described it as matter with negative energy.

Antimatter can be created from dark lightning—high-energy light emitted by deflected electrons after they are accelerated to near the speed of light by thunderstorms.

A look inside neutron stars, which are thought to contain nuclear pasta

Simulations show that beneath the outer crust of these objects, the gravitational force is so extreme that atomic nuclei link together into chains of primarily neutrons and some protons called nuclear spaghetti. Deeper in the star, these links combine to form sheets—nuclear lasagna—a quintillion times stronger than steel, making it the strongest material in the universe.

Watch how the machine at the heart of NASA's Cold Atom Lab produces atoms near absolute zero—the coldest theoretical temperature in the universe—for experiments involving quantum phenomena.

Despite fears of creating black holes, the Large Hadron Collider produces collisions with energies of 13.6 trillion electronvolts, about one million times smaller than the energy needed to create the lightest possible black holes.

The High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider will provide a tenfold increase in particle collisions compared with the initial LHC infrastructure by increasing the number of ions in collision bundles and by concentrating the ion beams.

A beam of neutrinos can be created by firing a beam of high-energy protons at a target to produce unstable particles that decay into neutrinos.

Scientists have determined the properties of cosmic rays by analyzing their trajectories in bubble chambers—containers filled with a vapor that clings to charged particles.

View the composition of the universe, dominated by dark energy and dark matter

About 95% of the observable universe is made of substances whose composition is unknown, but most of what remains (4%) is in the form of clouds of hydrogen and helium, followed by gases and plasma within stars (0.5%) and neutrinos created in nuclear reactions (0.3%).

In 2026, researchers successfully transported antimatter in a truck using a portable trap that employed electromagnetic fields to hold 92 antiprotons.

Some theorists have suggested that dark matter consists of supersymmetric particles—massive, hypothetical versions of known particles, such as the sneutrino, which is the supersymmetric partner of the neutrino.