A few billionths of a second after the Big Bang, the universe was made up of a kind of extremely hot and dense primordial soup.

Now, researchers have recreated that soup in miniature format at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern in Geneva.

The feat was achieved by colliding lead atoms at an extremely high energy in the 16.7 mile (27km) long particle accelerator.

The experiment could help shed light on how the early universe behaved more like a liquid rather than a ball of super-heated gas, as some scientists have proposed.

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A few billionths of a second after the Big Bang, the universe was made up of a kind of extremely hot and dense primordial soup. Now, researchers have recreated that soup in miniature format at the Large Hadron Collider (pictured) at Cern in Geneva, Switzerland

QUARK-GLUON PLASMA Quarks and gluons are elemental particles that make up all other subatomic particles and the atoms they form. In the seconds after the Big Bang, the normally powerful forces that bind these subatomic particles together were weakened. This resulted in a substance known as the quark-gluon plasma - a strange soup of superheated material. But rather than behaving like a superheated gas as scientists might expect, it appears this primordial soup of particles was more of a liquid, according to research from the Large Hadron Collider. The tiny fireballs created inside the 17 mile long particle accelerator, which is buried 300ft beneath the Alpine foothills along the Swiss-French border, have enabled scientists to recreate some of the conditions that existed shortly after the Big Bang. Advertisement

The primordial soup is a so-called 'quark-gluon plasma', and its creation allowed researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute to measure its properties.

Quarks and gluons are elemental particles that make up all other subatomic particles and the atoms they form.

In the seconds after the Big Bang, the normally powerful forces that bind these subatomic particles together were weakened.

This resulted in a substance known as the quark-gluon plasma - a strange soup of superheated material.

But rather than behaving like a superheated gas as scientists might expect, this primordial soup of particles was more of a liquid.

'The analyses of the collisions make it possible, for the first time, to measure the precise characteristics of a quark-gluon plasma at the highest energy ever and to determine how it flows,' explains You Zhou, who is a postdoc at the Niels Bohr Institute.

The focus of the project is on the quark-gluon plasma's collective properties, which show that this state of matter behaves more like a liquid than a gas, even at the very highest energy densities.

The measurements, which used new methods to study the link between particles, make it possible to determine the viscosity of this exotic fluid with great precision.

Zhou explains that the experimental method is very advanced and is based on the fact that when two spherical atomic nuclei are shot at each other and hit each other a bit off center.

The figure shows how a small, elongated drop of quark-gluon plasma is formed when two atomic nuclei hit each other a bit off center. The angular distribution of the emitted particles makes it possible to determine the properties of the quark-gluon plasma, including the viscosity

As a result, a quark-gluon plasma is formed with a slightly elongated shape, a bit like an American football.

This means that the pressure difference between the centre of this extremely hot 'droplet' and the surface varies along the different axes.

This means scientists can measure a characteristic variation in the number of particles produced in the collisions.

'It is remarkable that we are able to carry out such detailed measurements on a drop of 'early universe', that only has a radius of about one millionth of a billionth of a meter,' said Jens Jørgen Gaardhøje, professor and head of the ALICE group at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

'The results are fully consistent with the physical laws of hydrodynamics, i.e. the theory of flowing liquids and it shows that the quark-gluon plasma behaves like a fluid.