Physicists recreated the first millisecond after the Big Bang — and found it was surprisingly soupy

Large Hadron Collider experiments recreated conditions from microseconds after the Big Bang by smashing heavy atomic nuclei to form quark-gluon plasma, revealing the universe's primordial matter behaved more like liquid than gas. Scientists detected a subtle wake left by high-energy quarks moving through this trillion-degree plasma, showing less than 1% particle suppression that proves the early universe was surprisingly fluid-like. This provides the first clear evidence of how particles interacted in the opaque early universe, offering insights into cosmic conditions that can't be observed through telescopes.