All BIg Bang

Artist’s illustration of a “wake” created in quark-gluon plasma.

September 28, 2026

UIC physicists spot ripple from universe’s first moments

Finding advances efforts to understand matter just after the Big Bang

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland

November 17, 2025

UIC scientists recreate the universe’s first moments by slamming together oxygen ions 

At the Large Hadron Collider, physicists study quark-gluon plasma, which filled the universe right after the Big Bang.

A steaming bowl of "quark soup"

April 18, 2014

Collider reveals sharp change from ‘quark soup’ to atoms

New discovery addresses central question about origin of the universe