New State of Matter created at CERN

At a special seminar on 10 February＠｀ spokespersons from the experiments on CERN's Heavy Ion programme presented compelling evidence for the existence of a new state of matter in which quarks＠｀ instead of being bound up into more complex particles such as protons and neutrons＠｀ are liberated to roam freely.

Theory predicts that this state must have existed at about 10 microseconds after the Big Bang＠｀ before the formation of matter as we know it today＠｀ but until now it had not been confirmed experimentally. Our understanding of how the universe was created＠｀ which was previously unverified theory for any point in time before the formation of ordinary atomic nuclei＠｀ about three minutes after the Big Bang＠｀ has with these results now been experimentally tested back to a point only a few microseconds after the Big Bang.

http://www.cern.ch/Press/Releases00/01-QuarkGluonMatter.en.html