The Birth of Matter As We Know It- Meg Mickelsen

In the early years of the universe, all that existed was a subatomic soup of hot particles called quarks gluons,  which are the building blocks of today's protons and neutrons.  Using the incredibly versatile and powerful Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, scientists smash together regular old matter to create a primordial plasma of quarks and gluons.  RHIC moves particles in out of this state thousands of times per second as particles emerge from this superheated collision zone and freeze into more recognizable matter.
Based on scientific understand of the Strong Force, one of the four forces of nature, scientists expected to see distinct phases of matter, but the RHIC revealed that the transformation is slow and continuos like the melting of cool honey back into a liquid.  in other words, unlike water and ice, with which  there is a precise moment of melting, the transformation of quarks and gluons is a constant, continuous force.  Thus, that primordial plasma that composed our infant universe transforms into the bricks of our modern  world.   There is so much more to be discovered by the RHIC, a force of technology that reproduces the unimaginably harsh conditions of the infant universe with such stunning accuracy that scientists expect to make huge leaps in the understanding of the early universe in the next few years.  Read more about it at ScienceDaily.com