Glimpsing the birth of the universe

Scientists believe that the exotic particles were present a billionth of a second after the Big Bang. By colliding particles with huge energy, the LHC will recreate what these moments were like.

Inside the ALICE detector, collisions will create a very hot 'soup' of quarks and gluons - the bricks and mortar of matter - like that which existed during the Big Bang. This will give scientists a glimpse of how particles behaved at the birth of the universe. But why do we need to look back in time like this?