The world's most powerful particle accelerator smashed together lead nuclei at the highest energies possible, creating dense sub-atomic particles that reach temperatures of over ten trillion degrees. Beyond being awesome, this achievement shows the early universe was actually a liquid.
The current cosmological consensus is that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago with the Big Bang. But a legendary physicist says he's found the first evidence of an eternal, cyclic cosmos.
Move over protons, now there's something meatier. Scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva, Switzerland have swapped out protons for electron-stripped lead atoms. Why? To see the beginning of the universe.
