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The Large Hadron Collider has successfully forced a ‘mini-Big Bang’ by smashing together lead ions instead of protons. The resultant collision created temperatures of over ten trillion degrees - a million times hotter than those found at the centre of the Sun.

Before then, the scientists had been colliding protons in a bid to uncover the mysteries of the Universe’s formation, most notably the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson article and signs of new physical laws, such as a framework called supersymmetry. And an analysis of recent findings released by the compact muon solenoid (CMS) collaboration showed that the LHC had produced its first pair of z bosons – z bosons are one of the cleanest decay signatures to result from a decaying Higgs boson – and means scientists are one step closer to the Higgs boson. (More information on this story can be found at physicsworld.com).

This current phase of experiments is looking exclusively at lead ion collisions aims to provide scientists with more information about the plasma the universe was made of a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.

Dr David Evans from the University of Birmingham, who works on the experiment, described how “we are thrilled with the achievement...the process generated incredibly hot and dense sub-atomic fireballs, at these temperatures even protons and neutrons, which make up the nuclei of atoms, melt resulting in a hot dense soup of quarks and gluons known as a quark-gluon plasma”.

By studying the plasma, physicists hope to learn more about the so-called strong force - the force that binds the nuclei of atoms together and that is responsible for 98% of their mass.

For more information, visit the CERN website.

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