Small, short-lived drops of early universe matter

What was matter like moments after the Big Bang? Particles emerging from the lowest energy collisions of small particles with large heavy nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) could hold the answer. Scientists revealed the particles exhibit behavior associated with the formation of a soup of quarks and gluons, the building blocks of nearly all visible matter. These results from RHIC's PHENIX experiment suggest that these small-scale collisions might be producing tiny, short-lived ...