The new kind of matter is called color-glass condensate, and is a liquid like wave of gluons, which are elementary particles related to the strong force that sticks quarks together inside protons and neutrons (hence they are like "glue").
Scientists didn't expect this kind of matter would result from the type of particle collisions going on at the Large Hadron Collider at the time. However, it may explain some odd behavior seen inside the machine, which is a giant loop where particles race around underneath Switzerland and France.
Typical LHC particle tracks:
When scientists sped up protons (one of the building blocks of atoms) and lead ions (lead atoms, which contain 82 protons each, stripped of their electrons), and crashed them into each other, the resulting explosions liquefied those particles and gave rise to new particles in their wake. Most of these new particles, as expected, fly off in all directions at close to the speed of light.
The color-glass condensate's dense swarm of gluons may also sweep particles off in the same direction, suggested Brookhaven National Laboratory physicist Raju Venugopalan, who first predicted the substance, which may also be seen after proton-proton collisions.Entangled gluons in the color-glass condensate could explain how particles flying away from the collision point might share information about their flight direction with each other, Venugopalan said. Courtesy: Yahoo.com, CERN
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