Up until approximately 10^(-5) seconds after the Big Bang, the Universe was in a primordial state of matter called a quark-gluon plasma (QGP).  This is due to the fact that the early Universe was extremely hot and, in such a hot environment, normal matter, e.g., atoms, atomic nuclei, and even neutrons and protons, did not exist.  Fundamentally, the melting of protons of neutrons in the early Universe is predicted to occur at temperatures on the order of 2 trillion Kelvin, with this temperature being predicted by the fundamental theory governing quarks and gluons, which is called...