In the instant after the Big Bang, the only thing in the universe that existed was a hot plasma soup full of subatomic particles.
But to study that ancient plasma, you don't have to travel back in time billions of years to the Big Bang itself — just go out to Long Island, New York, where there's a gigantic particle collider.
Scientists like Stephen Hawking sometimes say particle colliders are the closest things we have to time machines, partly because they can recreate conditions present shortly after the Big Bang.
New York's "time machine" is called RHIC — short for Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and pronounced "Rick"— and it's part of the Department of Energy-sponsored Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. Built in 2000 for $616 million and now valued at about $2 billion, it's job is to make quark-gluon plasma soup. And it's the only device in the US that can do this.
Keep scrolling to see how the device works, how it's helping physicists solve the mysteries of the early universe, and why its future operation may be in danger.
RHIC is part of Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), which sits in the middle of the pine barrens on central Long Island.
It's the only active particle accelerator of its kind in the country. And at 2.4 miles around, it's visible from space.
Essentially, RHIC is an underground ring that shoots two beams of particles (in blue and yellow) at each other from opposite directions.
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