Scientists using the world's largest atom smasher have made some of the hottest and densest matter ever achieved on Earth.
The state of matter called a quark gluon plasma existed in the milliseconds after the big bang 13.7 billion years ago.
Physicists using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, smashed heavy lead ions together at close to the speed of light.
They generated temperatures of more than 1.6 trillion degrees Celsius, 100,000 times hotter than the centre of the Sun.
In the process they recreated the densest material ever observed - only black holes are denser.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/14/3243341.htm?section=justin
