Scientists have created what researchers describe as a “Mini Big Bang” at the Large Hadron Collider, producing signs of the extreme state of matter believed to have filled the universe during its first millionths of a second.
The experiments show that this primordial matter can emerge from collisions involving much lighter atomic nuclei than scientists once expected.
The work involves researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen and the international ALICE collaboration at CERN near Geneva. Scientists used the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, to smash oxygen and neon nuclei together at extremely high energies.
The facility has produced a series of discoveries about fundamental matter, including CERN’s recent identification of a new heavy baryon, a particle made of three quarks.
The collisions produced evidence of quark-gluon plasma, or QGP. Scientists believe this hot and dense state of matter existed shortly after the Big Bang, before quarks became bound together inside the protons and neutrons that make up ordinary matter today.
Other research into the early cosmos continues to trace what followed, including efforts to identify the first generation of stars after the Big Bang.
Smaller collisions recreate primordial matter
Under the extreme temperatures and pressures created in these collisions, quarks and gluons can move through the plasma instead of remaining confined inside larger particles. Studying this state gives physicists a way to investigate how the early universe evolved toward the matter that later formed stars, planets and galaxies.
For years, experiments at the LHC mainly used heavy nuclei such as lead and xenon to study quark-gluon plasma. Their large size helps create relatively large droplets of the hot material. ALICE has also used lead nuclei to study other rare processes, including experiments in which CERN scientists detected the conversion of lead into gold.
The latest research shows that much smaller systems can display similar behavior. Scientists studied collisions involving oxygen-16 and neon-20, opening a new way to investigate how small a collision system can become while still producing signs associated with quark-gluon plasma.
The findings challenge earlier assumptions about the conditions needed to create the plasma. Recent LHC results have produced multiple signs consistent with QGP formation in oxygen-oxygen and neon-neon collisions.
Those signs include patterns in how particles move after a collision and evidence that energetic quarks and gluons lose energy while traveling through the dense material.
Particle trails reveal nuclear shapes
The smaller collision systems could now help researchers study the boundary between ordinary particle interactions and the formation of quark-gluon plasma. They could also provide new information about the structure of the atomic nuclei themselves.
Quark-gluon plasma exists for only a tiny fraction of a second, making it impossible to observe like an ordinary liquid. Instead, physicists examine the particles produced as the plasma expands, cools, and breaks apart. Those particles carry information about the collision that created them.
Scientists have created a “Mini Big Bang” at CERN, recreating the state of matter believed to have filled the universe moments after its birth.
By smashing oxygen and neon nuclei at extreme speeds, researchers produced signs of quark-gluon plasma. pic.twitter.com/bXBPJUdHNY— Tom Marvolo Riddle (@tom_riddle2025) August 20, 2026
Researchers found that their movement can reflect the geometry of the original nuclei. Oxygen-16 is comparatively round, while neon-20 is predicted to have a more elongated and uneven structure, sometimes compared with the shape of a bowling pin.
When the nuclei collide, differences in their shapes influence the initial collision region. As the resulting matter expands, those differences affect the directions in which particles travel.
ALICE, ATLAS and CMS have measured substantial flow patterns in oxygen and neon collisions. The results closely match theoretical calculations in which the original nuclear geometry influences the later movement of particles. CERN researchers say the measurements support the unusual elongated structure predicted for neon.
High-energy collisions offer a new tool
The effect gives physicists a new way to study nuclear structure at extremely high energies. The method connects two areas of physics that have traditionally been studied under very different conditions. Nuclear structure is often investigated through relatively low-energy experiments that examine how nuclei rotate, vibrate, and respond to other particles.
The new approach instead uses some of the highest-energy nuclear collisions scientists can produce. It could eventually allow researchers to examine nuclei whose internal structures remain poorly understood. At the same time, the collisions provide laboratories for studying the strong interaction, the fundamental force described by quantum chromodynamics that governs quarks and gluons.
Scientists are continuing to analyze the growing collection of light-ion collision data from the LHC. Researchers are particularly interested in determining how small a collision system can become before the collective behavior associated with quark-gluon plasma disappears.
Experiments could test the plasma’s limits
The answer could help physicists refine models of how matter behaved during the universe’s earliest moments. The experiments serve two purposes. They offer a new way to map the hidden shapes of atomic nuclei while recreating, on a microscopic scale, conditions similar to those that existed shortly after the Big Bang.
Scientists are also probing later stages of cosmic evolution through observations such as the discovery of oxygen in one of the earliest known galaxies, which offers clues about how quickly the young universe changed.
By studying the particles left behind by these tiny laboratory fireballs, researchers hope to better understand both the structure of matter today and the primordial state from which it emerged.
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