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Professor Kostya Trachenko, Professor of Physics at Queen Mary University of London and author of the recent paper, said: “We do not fully understand the origin of this striking similarity yet but we think it could be related to the fundamental physical constants which set both the universal lower limit of viscosity for both ordinary liquids and quark-gluon plasma.” The recent study found that it is this universal lower limit of viscosity of ordinary fluids like water that turns out to be close to the viscosity of quark-gluon plasma. It is these constants of nature that ultimately decide whether a proton is a stable particle, and govern processes like nuclear synthesis in stars and the creation of essential biochemical elements needed for life. Previous research found that in that limit, fluid viscosity is governed by fundamental physical constants such as the Planck constant and the nucleon mass. However, there is one very particular point where liquid viscosity has a nearly-universal lower limit. Indeed, liquid viscosity can vary by many orders of magnitude depending on temperature.

Importantly, it’s not just any liquid viscosity that coincides with the viscosity of quark-gluon plasma. Therefore, if this ratio is the same for two different fluids these two fluids will flow in the same way even if they have very different viscosities and densities. This ratio is important because the fluid flow does not depend on viscosity alone but is governed by the Navier-Stokes equation which contains density and viscosity. However, the recent study shows that despite these differences the ratio of viscosity and density, known as the kinematic viscosity, is close in both quark-gluon plasma and ordinary liquids. For example, fluids like water are governed by the behavior of atoms and molecules that are much larger than the particles found in quark-gluon plasma, and are held together by weaker forces. The ordinary matter we encounter on a daily basis is thought to have very different properties to the quark-gluon plasma found in the early beginnings of the Universe. Since the early 2000s scientists have been able to recreate quark-gluon plasma experimentally using large particle colliders, which has provided new insights into this exotic state of matter.

This then cooled microseconds later to form the building blocks of all the matter found within our universe. It is thought that shortly after the Big Bang the early universe was filled with incredibly hot quark-gluon plasma.

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At very high temperatures - about one million times hotter than the center of the Sun - quarks and gluons break free from their parent nucleons and instead form a dense, hot soup known as quark-gluon plasma. Nuclei consist of protons and neutrons known collectively as nucleons and these, in turn, consist of quarks interacting via gluons. The matter that makes up our Universe is made of atoms, which consist of nuclei with orbiting electrons.