“Large Hadron Collider reveals evidence of Big Bang matter in surprisingly small collisions”

Key points

• LHC experiments report signs of quark-gluon plasma forming in oxygen and neon collisions.
• Four collaborations ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb publish evidence of QGP.
• Energy loss of energetic quarks and gluons observed as jets travel through plasma.
• Results challenge belief that only heavy nuclei collisions could create QGP.
• Findings enable new studies of early universe conditions moments after the Big Bang.