The smallest droplets of water ever created may have been produced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and the discovery may shed light on the origin of the Universe.

The experiment was guided by Julia Velkovska, a physicist from Vanderbilt. The droplets measured formed as part of an experiment conducted using the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. The process involved smashing lead ions with protons traveling at nearly the speed of light. Measurements suggest the creation of droplets of liquid just three to five times larger than a proton. This is approximately 100,000 times smaller than a hydrogen atom.

The manner in which these particles behaved is similar to that of a quark-gluon plasma, which exists only in extremely hot, compressed conditions. Quarks are the particle which form protons, and are held together by gluons.

This new discovery can help researchers determine how matter interacts at incredibly small scales, and may give scientists a glimpse at how the Universe behaved when it was very young. It is believed that during most of the first second after the Big Bang, the entire Universe consisted of such a plasma.

Velkovska said, "With this discovery, we seem to be seeing the very origin of collective behavior," referring to the interaction of matter at smaller-than-microscopic scales.

Earlier experiments using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory had previously formed the short-lived quark-gluon plasma by colliding two neuclei together at velocities close to the speed of light. Researchers at that time, who expected the resulting particles to act like a gas, were surprised when it instead showed behavior like that of a liquid. Researchers at the LHC planned to do similar experiments using a pair of nuclei, and dubbed the attempt the Compact Muon Solendoid experiment. In order to create a control case, they substituted one of the ions for a proton, expecting minimal results. Instead, they set a world record, and there appear to be several particles involved in the process.

Velkovska said, "Regardless of the material that we are using, collisions have to be violent enough to produce about 50 sub-atomic particles before we begin to see collective, flow-like behavior."

The possible detection of the world's smallest liquid droplets was published in Physical Review D, a well-respected physics journal.