Undiscovering Quark-gluon Plasma

Quark-gluon plasma (QGP) is a conjectured state of matter wherein the quarks and gluons of QCD theory, usually confined within the nucleons in atomic nuclei, are deconfined under conditions of extremely high temperature and pressure. According to the current understanding of big-bang evolution, conditions compatible with QGP formation existed for a brief early period as the universe expanded and cooled. In that scenario present matter in the universe in some sense emerged from ``freezeout’’ of the primordial QGP. This article describes the rise and fall of a community effort to create QGP in the laboratory and study its properties.