Densest matter
- Who
- Unknown
- What
- 20:1 ratio
- Where
- United States (Brookhaven National Laboratory,)
- When
- January 2001
Scientists using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider have created the matter 20 times denser than the nucleus of an atom. By smashing the nucleii of gold atoms together at close to the speed of light, they were able to create exotic subatomic particles such as 'quarks' and 'gluons', which lasted for tiny fractions of a second. Matter this dense has probably not existed in the universe since its creation in the Big Bang, roughly 12-15 billion years ago.