In the coming four weeks, the Large Hadron Collider will begin smashing lead ions together at super-high speeds, creating extremely hot and dense conditions similar to those just instants after the big bang. "Lead ion collisions at the L.H.C. last year showed hints of producing a quark-gluon plasma, an exotic state of matter in which quarks—normally bound in pairs or triplets—are able to wander freely." Until now, the L.H.C. has been hunting the Higgs boson, a particle believed to give mass to matter.
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