At that point, the whole cosmos was in a state called the quark-gluon plasma. Quarks are fundamental particles that make up (among other things) the protons and neutrons at the core of atoms.

T he quarks that make up the nuclei of all atoms around us are known to "mix": the different types of quark occasionally change into one another. The amounts in which these processes happen are ...

This high-density quark behavior is called color superconductivity. The strength of pairing inside a color superconductor is difficult to calculate, but scientists have long known the strength's ...