Before matter as we know it emerged, the universe was filled with the primordial state of hadronic matter called quark–gluon plasma. This hot soup of quarks and gluons is effectively an inescapable consequence of our current knowledge about the fundamental hadronic interactions: quantum chromodynamics.
Nuclear Physics, Heavy Ions, Hadrons; History and Philosophical Foundations of Physics; Particle Acceleration and Detection, Beam Physics; History of Science