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CERN Recreates the Primordial Matter After the Big Bang · The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the quart Side Quantum Physics Podcast, an exploration
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: of the fundamental structure of reality, where quantum laws govern matter, energy,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and information. Here, uncertainty is a feature, not a flaw,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: and understanding begins at the smallest scales.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I want you to take a second and just imagine
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: something for me. Picture holding a tiny, almost imperceptible droplet
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: right in the palm of.
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  Speaker 3: Your hand, just a tiny speck.
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  Speaker 2: Really, yeah, exactly, But this isn't a droplet of water.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: This is a droplet of the universe, exactly as it existed,
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  Speaker 2: mere fractions of second after the Big Bang, A microscopic
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  Speaker 2: speck of the most extreme, unimaginable heat and energy, just
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: sitting right there in the room with you.
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  Speaker 3: It's a completely mind bending thought, honestly. I mean, we
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  Speaker 3: are talking about conditions so incredibly violent that the very
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: laws of physics, the way matter behaves on an everyday basis,
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: they completely break down. They transform into something totally alien
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: to our current reality.
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  Speaker 2: Right, And the craziest part isn't just imagining it. The
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: really wild part is that scientists are actually recreating this
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  Speaker 2: exact primordial soup right now here on Earth.
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  Speaker 4: They really are today We.
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  Speaker 2: Are exploring a massive breakthrough in particle physics.
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  Speaker 4: We're looking at.
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  Speaker 2: Brand new twenty twenty five data from the Large Hadron
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  Speaker 2: Collider ETCERN, and we're going to figure out how scientists
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  Speaker 2: are actively rewriting the rules of the early universe by
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  Speaker 2: discovering this extreme state of matter in a surprisingly tiny package,
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  Speaker 2: which is oxygen collisions. Okay, let's umpact this.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, So to really grasp the magnitude of creating this
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: primordial soup, what physicists call a quark gluon plasma or
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: QGP for short, we have to bypass the everyday atoms
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  Speaker 3: that make up your chair or your body. We have
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  Speaker 3: to zooms straight into.
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  Speaker 4: The nucleus, like all the way down.
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  Speaker 3: All the way down, because if you look at a
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  Speaker 3: single proton or a neutron, they are not solid little spheres.
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  Speaker 3: They're actually made up of even smaller fundamental particles called quarks,
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  Speaker 3: and these quarks are bound together by another type of
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  Speaker 3: particle called the gluon.
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  Speaker 4: Gluons.
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  Speaker 2: I've always loved that name because it literally sounds exactly
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: like what they do.
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  Speaker 4: They're the glue.
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  Speaker 3: They are the glue exactly. They carry what we call
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  Speaker 3: the strong nuclear force and I gotta say, the strong
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  Speaker 3: force more than lives up to its name. It is
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  Speaker 3: the most powerful force in nature. It's vastly stronger than
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  Speaker 3: gravity or electromagnetism.
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  Speaker 4: Wow.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, under normal conditions in the universe today, that strong
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  Speaker 3: nuclear force is absolute. Quarks are never ever found on
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: their own, and the mechanics of it are just bizarre because,
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: unlike gravity, which gets weaker the further two things are apart,
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: the strong force actually gets stronger the harder you try
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  Speaker 3: to pull two quarks away from each other.
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  Speaker 2: It's essentially a microscopic prison, like if you think of
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: a proton as a heavily certified prison cell. The quarks
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  Speaker 2: of the inmates and the gluons are these unbreakable heavy
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: iron chains keeping them longed inside.
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  Speaker 3: And that's a great way to picture it.
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  Speaker 2: And because pulling them apart only makes the chains pull
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  Speaker 2: back harder, under normal circumstances, there's absolutely no escape. So
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  Speaker 2: I mean, how exactly do we break those chains to
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  Speaker 2: get this core gluon plasma.
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  Speaker 3: Well, the only way to melt those unbreakable chains is
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  Speaker 3: through an environment of unimaginable heat and density. We are
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  Speaker 3: talking about temperatures reaching roughly five and a half trillion
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  Speaker 3: degrees celsius trillion with a T with a T that
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  Speaker 3: is hundreds of thousands of times hotter than the core.
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  Speaker 2: Of our Sun, which is almost impossible to even conceptualized.
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  Speaker 2: And what even happens to a proton at five trillion degrees?
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  Speaker 3: A complete phase change happens. Think about how solid ice
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  Speaker 3: melts into liquid water, right and then it boils into
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  Speaker 3: a chaotic cloud of steam as you add heat. When
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  Speaker 3: you take normal matter and subject it to the temperature
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  Speaker 3: of the early universe, it undergoes the ultimate phase change.
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  Speaker 3: The boundaries of the protons and neutrons just they melt
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  Speaker 3: away entirely. The strong force loses its grip, so of
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  Speaker 3: the chains break exactly. The quarks and gluons are no
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  Speaker 3: longer trapped in their little prisons. They roam completely freely,
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  Speaker 3: swarming around each other in this dense, super hot fluid.
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  Speaker 4: The cork gluon plasma.
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  Speaker 3: That is, the plasma. It is exactly what the entire
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  Speaker 3: universe look like for a fleeting, tiny fraction of a
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  Speaker 3: second right after the Big Bang. This was before space
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  Speaker 3: expanded and cooled down enough for the first permanent protons
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  Speaker 3: and neutrons to condense.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, So by smashing particles together at nearly the speed
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  Speaker 2: of light in the large hat and collider, physicists are
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  Speaker 2: generating that specific level of heat for just a microscoptic
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  Speaker 2: fraction of a second in a space vastly smaller than
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  Speaker 2: a single atom.
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  Speaker 3: Right, they're creating a localized big bang.
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  Speaker 2: Let's set the scene on how they actually do that, though,
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  Speaker 2: because the engineering alone is just staggering. You've got the
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  Speaker 2: CMS collaboration, the compact Muon solenoid operating on this massive
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  Speaker 2: twenty seven kilometer underground ring.
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  Speaker 3: It's a marvel of human engineering, truly.
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  Speaker 2: You have these super cool electromagne and it's chilled to
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  Speaker 2: a temperature colder than outer space, and they're guiding these
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  Speaker 2: atomic nuclei in an absolute vacuum until they cross paths
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  Speaker 2: and just violently collide.
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  Speaker 3: And the precision required for that is mind boggling. But
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  Speaker 3: you know that brings up the fundamental challenge of this
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  Speaker 3: entire field of physics, because if this newly created droplet
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  Speaker 3: of primordial soup is smaller than an atom, and it
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  Speaker 3: only exists for a yactosecond, a yactosecond, that's a billionth
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  Speaker 3: of a billionth of a millionth of a second.
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  Speaker 4: Oh wow, Yeah, it.
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  Speaker 3: Exists for that unfathomably short time before it cools down
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  Speaker 3: and turns back into normal matter. So the question is,
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  Speaker 3: how can we possibly know it was ever there?
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  Speaker 2: Right, because you can't exactly snap a photo of a
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  Speaker 2: yactosecond event.
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  Speaker 4: It's too fast exactly.
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  Speaker 3: By the time the giant fourteen thousand tons cms detector
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  Speaker 3: even registers that a collision happened, the quark gluon plasma
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  Speaker 3: is long gone. So instead of looking for the plasma itself,
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  Speaker 3: physicists have to look for its footprints. They analyze the
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  Speaker 3: microscopic debris the aftermath of the collision.
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  Speaker 2: And this is where the detectors act like a giant
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  Speaker 2: high speed three D camera, right, just tracking all the
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  Speaker 2: pieces of flyoutward.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's spot on. When these near life speed collisions happen,
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  Speaker 3: they don't just generate intense heat. The impact also produces
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  Speaker 3: incredibly energetic particles that shoot outward in opposite directions. Okay, now,
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  Speaker 3: if there is no quark gluon plasma created in the collision,
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  Speaker 3: these high energy particles just fly outward freely. They hit
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  Speaker 3: the outer layers of the detectors at full speed.
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  Speaker 2: It's kind of like firing a bullet into a pool
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  Speaker 2: of water, right Like, if I fire a bullet through
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  Speaker 2: the empty air, it just keeps going, it retains almost
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  Speaker 2: all of its speed and trajectory. But if I fire
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  Speaker 2: that same bullet into a dense swimming pool, the water
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  Speaker 2: immediately pushes back on it. The bullet experience is massive drag.
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  Speaker 2: It slows down dramatically, and it loses a ton of
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  Speaker 2: its kinetic energy before.
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  Speaker 4: It gets very far.
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  Speaker 3: That illustrates the physical mechanism perfectly. In particle physics, that
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  Speaker 3: pool of water is the microscopic droplet of quark gluon
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  Speaker 3: plasma A. So if a collision is violent enough to
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  Speaker 3: create a droplet of QGP, those fast, highly energetic particles
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  Speaker 3: that are trying to spray outward suddenly find themselves having
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  Speaker 3: to push their way through this incredibly dense, super hot
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  Speaker 3: soup of free floating quirks and glue.
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  Speaker 2: On, And just like the bullet hitting the water, they
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  Speaker 2: experienced that massive drag.
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  Speaker 3: They lose a tremendous amount of energy along the way.
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  Speaker 3: Physicists actually call this specific phenomenon jet quenching. Jet quenching,
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  Speaker 3: right There's a researcher, Jang Yongjia who specializes in this
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  Speaker 3: exact phenomenon at Stonybrick University, and he points out that
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  Speaker 3: observing this massive energy loss, this jet quenching, is the
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  Speaker 3: absolute gold standard in the.
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  Speaker 4: Field, really the gold standard.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the definitive signature physicists used to prove that
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  Speaker 3: a qgp droplet was present. When you measure the debris
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  Speaker 3: and see that the fastest particles were suddenly slowed down
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  Speaker 3: and sapped of their energy. You know with certainty they
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  Speaker 3: had to travel through that dense primordial soup.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so that establishes the how we look for the
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  Speaker 2: fast particles losing energy the jet quenching. But I want
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  Speaker 2: to back up a second, because I know the Large
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  Speaker 2: Hadron Collider has been operational for years. I mean, it's
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  Speaker 2: femous for discovering the Higgs boson over a decade ago. Absolutely,
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  Speaker 2: So haven't we been smashing particles and looking for this
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  Speaker 2: soup for a long time? Why is doing it with
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  Speaker 2: oxygen In twenty twenty five at five taro electron volts
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  Speaker 2: such a revolutionary leap.
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  Speaker 3: Well, it comes down to the sheer scale of the
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  Speaker 3: collisions For many years, physicists have absolutely been creating quark
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  Speaker 3: glue on plasma and observing this jet quenching effect, but
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  Speaker 3: they were only able to achieve it by smashing together
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  Speaker 3: the absolute behemoths of the periodic.
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  Speaker 4: Table, the really heavy stuff.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly. We are talking about massive, incredibly heavy nuclei, like
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  Speaker 3: lead or gold.
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  Speaker 2: The lead nucleus has what two hundred and eight protons
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  Speaker 2: and neutrons packed into it, right.
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  Speaker 4: Two eight.
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  Speaker 3: So when you smash two heavy lead nuclei together at
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  Speaker 3: ninety nine point nine percent the speed of light, you
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  Speaker 3: have a massive amount of material involved. It is the
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  Speaker 3: atomic equivalent of a head on collision between two fully
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  Speaker 3: loaded freight trains.
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  Speaker 4: Okay, that makes sense.
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  Speaker 3: Tons of material, and because of that you create a
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  Speaker 3: relatively large, long lasting droplet of plasma, which makes the
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  Speaker 3: bullet in water effect the jet quenching very obvious and
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  Speaker 3: easy to measure. But whenever physicists tried to look for
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  Speaker 3: this exact effect in lower mass collisions, say smashing a
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  Speaker 3: single tiny proton into a lead nucleus, they hit a wall.
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  Speaker 4: They couldn't find it.
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  Speaker 3: They might see vague hints of unusual fluid dynamics, but
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  Speaker 3: they never saw clear convincing evidence that the particle jets
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  Speaker 3: were being suppressed by a plasma.
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  Speaker 2: I assume because there just wasn't enough material to make
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  Speaker 2: a big enough pool of water to slow the bullet
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  Speaker 2: down in.
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  Speaker 4: The first place.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly that was the widely held assumption in the community.
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  Speaker 3: There seemed to be a strict size limit. You needed
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  Speaker 3: a heavy freight train to generate the heat and density
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  Speaker 3: required to melt the strong nuclear force. Which is why
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  Speaker 3: the twenty twenty five cms experiment with oxygen is just
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  Speaker 3: overturning decades of assumptions.
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  Speaker 2: Because oxygen is vastly smaller than less. If lead has
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  Speaker 2: two hundred eight nucleons, oxygen has just sixteen. It's a
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  Speaker 2: tiny fraction of the mass it is.
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  Speaker 3: Comparing a massive lead collision to an oxygen collision is
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  Speaker 3: like comparing that catastrophic freight train crash to two small
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  Speaker 3: compact cars bumping bumpers on the highway.
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  Speaker 4: Wow.
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  Speaker 3: And this brings us to the energy scale of the
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  Speaker 3: twenty twenty five experiments, which run at five terra electron
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  Speaker 3: vaults or TV.
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  Speaker 2: Let's actually define that because five TV sounds impressive, but
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  Speaker 2: what does that energy scale actually look like?
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  Speaker 3: In the real world like practically sure, so, one tero
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  Speaker 3: electron vault is roughly equivalent to the kinetic energy of
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  Speaker 3: a flying mosquito. A mosquito, Okay, right, that might not
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  Speaker 3: sound like a lot of energy to us, but imagine
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  Speaker 3: taking the kinetic energy of five flying mosquitos and concentrating
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  Speaker 3: all of it into a space a trillion times smaller
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  Speaker 3: than a single grain of sand. That is horrifying action
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  Speaker 3: an unbelievable density. That is the energy packed into a
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  Speaker 3: single proton. So multiply that by the sixteen protons and
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  Speaker 3: neutrons and the oxygen nucleus, and you have this unbelievably
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  Speaker 3: concentrated point of energy upon impact.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, here's where it gets really interesting, because despite how
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  Speaker 2: incredibly tiny the oxygen nuclei are, data pouring out of
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  Speaker 2: those five TV collisions in twenty twenty five revealed a massive,
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  Speaker 2: undeniable reduction in the energy of the particles sprang out.
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  Speaker 2: We are talking about a suppression reaching about thirty percent
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  Speaker 2: at certain energy levels.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, the fast particles were losing nearly a third of
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  Speaker 3: their energy. That's huge, it is the magnitude of that
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  Speaker 3: drop is far beyond what could ever be explained by
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  Speaker 3: a simple anomaly or a random statistical fluctuation in the detectors.
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  Speaker 3: And what made the physicists truly take notice was the
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  Speaker 3: shape of the data.
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  Speaker 4: What do you mean by the shape?
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  Speaker 3: The specific curve of how the energy was lost across
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  Speaker 3: different trajectories and the tiny oxygen collisions. It matched the
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: pattern scene and the massive lead collisions perfectly. Oh wow,
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  Speaker 3: The effect was weaker overall, simply because the droplet itself
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  Speaker 3: is smaller, sure, but the underlying physics, the specific way
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  Speaker 3: the jets were quenched looked identical to them massive heavy
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: ion crashes.
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  Speaker 2: So even though oxygen only has sixteen protons and neutrons,
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  Speaker 2: it still manages to create a dense enough medium to
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  Speaker 2: absorb a massive chunk of that energy.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly.
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  Speaker 2: It proves that the primordial soup doesn't need a heavy
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: massive collision to form. You don't need the freight trains.
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  Speaker 2: It can happen in these incredibly light, tiny subatomic systems.
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  Speaker 3: It radically rewrites our understanding of the minimum threshold required
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  Speaker 3: to melt the strong nuclear force. We now know that
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  Speaker 3: quark luon plasma can form in microscopic droplets vastly smaller
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  Speaker 3: and faster than anyone in the physics community previously thought possible.
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  Speaker 2: Hold on, though, I got to play Devil's advocate here. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: a thirty percent drop is massive. Yes, but we're talking
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  Speaker 2: about quantum physics here, and quantum mechanics is notoriously weird
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  Speaker 2: and unpredictable. Couldn't that massive energy loss just be like
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  Speaker 2: a glitch in how the oxygen atom was structured before
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  Speaker 2: it even crashed?
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  Speaker 4: Like, are we entirely sure?
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  Speaker 2: It's plasma drag?
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  Speaker 3: And this is exactly why the scientific method demands rigorous skepticism.
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  Speaker 3: Never jump to the final conclusion until you have methodically
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: eliminated absolutely every other possibility. And to their credit, the
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: researchers publishing this data are fully acknowledging a very significant
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  Speaker 3: quantum caveat. There is an alternative explanation for a large
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  Speaker 3: portion of that thirty percent drop.
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  Speaker 2: Wait, really, what could mimic a plasma drag so perfectly?
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  Speaker 3: It has to do with something physicists call nuclear parton
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  Speaker 3: distribution functions or npdfs for short.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, let's break that down. Partons are just the collective
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  Speaker 2: term for the quarks and the gluons, right, the inmates
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  Speaker 2: in the chains.
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  Speaker 3: Correct, But those quarks and gluons inside an oxygen nucleus
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  Speaker 3: are not static because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: inside of a nucleus is a boiling, chaotic sea of
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: virtual particles. The quarks and gluons are constantly moving, shifting,
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  Speaker 3: and interacting in incredibly complex ways.
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  Speaker 4: So it's not a neat little package.
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  Speaker 3: Not at all. A nuclear parton distribution function is essentially
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  Speaker 3: a mathematical probability map. It maps out out how all
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  Speaker 3: those quarks and gluons are arranged and moving inside the nucleus,
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  Speaker 3: right in the mirror at a seconds before the collision happens.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, I get it. That's like knowing the exact seating
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: arrangement of passengers on an airplane right before a crash. Like,
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: if all the passengers are seated on the left side
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  Speaker 2: of the plane, the structural damage during impact is going
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: to look completely different than if they were evenly spread out.
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  Speaker 3: That analogy gets right to the core of the causality here.
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  Speaker 3: Let's extend that seating arrangement idea to explain the physics
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  Speaker 3: of what we call shadowing.
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  Speaker 4: Shadowing.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, when you pack sixteen protons and neutrons together, into
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: an oxygen nucleus, they start to crowd each other. The
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: way the quarks are distributed inside a single, lonely proton
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: is slightly different than how they are distributed when they
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: are crammed together inside oxygen. Sometimes, in that boiling sea
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: of particles, the quarks line up in a way where
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: the ones in the front literally shield or shadow the
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: ones in the back.
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  Speaker 2: Ah, So when the two oxygen nuclei smash into each other,
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: the incoming particles only hit the quarks in the front row.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: The quarks in the back are basically protected by the ones.
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: In front of them.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly because of that shadowing. The total number of hard
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: head on impacts is reduced. And remember it is those
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: hard head on impacts that create the high energy particles
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: the bullets in the first place.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 3: Depending on exactly how the quarks were arranged right at
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: the moment of impact, it can actually change the total
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: number of high energy jets that get produced.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: So the data might be tricking us. It might not
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: be that a bunch of particles are getting created and
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  Speaker 2: then slowed down by a pool of plasma. It might
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  Speaker 2: be that fewer high energy particles are being created to
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: begin with. Simply because of how the quarks were shadowing
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: each other before they even hit.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: You nailed it. Researchers diving into the math of these
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: nuclear part and distribution functions estimate that the sheer quantum
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: randomness of how the quarks and gluons were arranged could
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: potentially account for up to half of that thirty percent
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: energy loss all on its own.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: Up to half, So it could be a fifteen percent
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: drop caused by the actual plasma drag and a fifteen
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: percent drop caused by the initial seating arrangement preventing the
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: particles from forming in the first place.
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  Speaker 3: Right, Well, what's fascinating here is that this uncertainty isn't
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: seen as a failure of the CMS experiment.
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: It's not.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: No, it doesn't mean the quark gluon plasma isn't there
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: in the oxygen collisions. It just means the signal of
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: the plasma is entangled with the initial state of the nucleus.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: Identifying exactly what you don't know and defining the boundaries
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: of that uncertainty is the most crucial step in quantum physics.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: This caveat provides the perfect roadmap for exactly what scientists
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: need to do next to isolate the plasma signal completely.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: Okay, but if we know the seating arrangement of the
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: quarks is muddying the data by up to fifteen percent,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: how on earth do you isolate that? Do you just
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: have to run the collision with a simpler atom.
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: That is exactly the next phase of the research. The
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: immediate next steps involve changing the variables of the crash.
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: The Large Hadron Collider has upcoming operational runs plan where
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: they won't just smash to complex oxygen nuclei together. Instead,
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: they are going to collide a single solitary proton into
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: an oxygen nucleus.
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: So you take the.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Simplest possible projectile, just one single proton, and fire it
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: into the complex oxygen nucleus.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: Yep, a proton oxygen collision doesn't have nearly enough mass
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: or energy to create a meaningful amount of quirk gluon plasma.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: The droplet, if it forms at all, would be too
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: negligible to cause any jet quenching. Okay, So if we
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: measure the high energy particles from that specific collision, any
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: strange energy suppression we see will be purely due to
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: those part and distribution functions. The initial seating arrangement and
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: shadowing of the oxygen quarks.
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: You're establishing a clean baseline exactly.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: Once physicists measure exactly how much of the energy loss
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: is caused by the initial state of the oxygen, they
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: can take that number and simply subtract it from the
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: thirty percent total suppression they saw in the oxygen oxygen collisions.
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: That is brilliant.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: Whatever suppression is left over after that math is done,
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: is your definitive under deniable proof of the quark gluon
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: plasma droplet causing drag.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: It's like doing the math to subtract the weight of
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: the glass bowl so you know exactly how much the
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: flower inside it weighs.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: It is the exact same principle, just applied it at
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: nearly the speed of light and beyond these proton oxygen collisions.
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: Researchers also plan to test other light nuclei across the
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: periodic table, like neon.
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: Neon's just a bit heavier right.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: Right, Neon is slightly heavier than oxygen with twenty nucleons.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: By comparing the proton baselines with oxygen, the neon, and
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: then all the way up to lead, they can map
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: out a continuous, unbroken curve of exactly how the properties
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: of this primordial soup scale as you slowly increase the
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: size of the colliding system.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: That's incredible. So to wrap this up, what does this
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: all mean for the person listening right now? If we
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: connect this highly complex particle physics to the bigger picture.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Why does a tiny split second droplet of plasma in
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: an underground tunnel in Switzerland actually matter?
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: Well, it matters because this is the mechanics of our
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: very existence.
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: Wow, okay, big it is.
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: The strong nuclear force is the reason atoms can form.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: It is the reason complex chemistry is possible, which means
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: it is the reason you exist. But for decades, human
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: beings have only truly understood how that force operates in
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: the cold, calm, structured conditions of our current universe.
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: Right the everyday stuff.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: By studying these tiny droplets of cork gluon plasma, we
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: are finally seeing how the strong force behaves under the
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: most extreme, violent conditions known in nature. We are looking
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: directly into the engine of the early universe. You know,
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: we're discovering how matter itself evolved from a chaotic, super
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: hot soup into the structured, stable, atoms that make up
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: our entire reality.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: We're figuring out the exact threshold where the primordial universe
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: crystallizes into the modern world, And honestly, the incredible part
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: is realizing that this violent, chaotic origin isn't just trapped
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: thirteen point eight billion years in the past. It's locked
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: inside the very oxygen molecules we breathe every single day,
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: just waiting for enough energy to be unleashed again.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: It's a beautiful way to think about it. The blueprint
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: of the Big Bang is hidden in the simplest elements
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: all around us.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Just remember that the next time you take a deep breath,
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: you're inhaling the potential for a billion tiny big bangs.