Physicists recently re-created the conditions of the big bang using the ALICE detector in the Large Hadron Collider (pictures) near Geneva, Switzerland. The scientists smashed together lead ions—atoms of lead that had been stripped of their electrons—at nearly the speed of light.

The experiment successfully created a tiny "subatomic volume" of a primordial state of matter known as a quark-gluon plasma. This exotic substance is thought to have existed only briefly in the early universe.

The plasma is made of subatomic particles called quarks and gluons. Quarks are the elementary building blocks of positively charged protons and neutral neutrons, which make up the cores of atoms. Gluons are particles that "glue" quarks