Physicists create a tiny “Big Bang” with surprisingly small atomic nuclei

Physicists at the University of Copenhagen recreated quark-gluon plasma, the primordial "soup" that filled the Universe in its first millionth of a second, using much smaller atomic nuclei than previously thought possible. By smashing oxygen and neon nuclei together at CERN, researchers discovered that particle movement patterns after each collision reveal the original shape of the nuclei, opening a new way to study nuclear structure and the early Universe.