RIGHT after the big bang the Universe existed as a soup of free-roaming
fundamental particles that didn’t obey the normal rules of physics, scientists
have confirmed at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics near
Geneva.
Particles such as protons and neutrons are actually made up of smaller
fundamental components called quarks which cannot exist on their own. Quarks are
kept tightly bound together by something called the strong force, which in turn
is mediated by other particles called gluons.
But theory predicts that immediately after the big bang, conditions would
have been so hot and dense that the strong…
