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Physicists smashed gold nuclei together at almost the speed of light and discovered an unanticipated pattern in the particles these crashes sprayed out. If validated, that pattern might assist expose how the hot soup of quarks and gluons that filled deep space in the very first couple of split seconds after the Big Bang cooled and condensed into the protons and neutrons that comprise common matter today.

In every accident, particles are flung out sideways; how difficult they are flung, typically, differs somewhat from one accident to the next. Physicists anticipated the size of these variations to alter efficiently as they changed the accident energy. Rather, the variations dipped, diminishing and after that growing once again. This dip might be an indication of a long-sought “critical point,” an unique set of conditions at which nuclear matter alters the method it changes from one kind to another.

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