The highest temperature ever recorded in the universe was achieved by experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
The LHC experiment created a temperature of 9.9 trillion degrees Fahrenheit, which is more than 366,000 times hotter than the center of the Sun.
The Brookhaven experiment created a temperature of 4 trillion degrees Celsius, which is about 250,000 times hotter than the Sun's core.
Both experiments aimed to recreate the primordial state of matter called quark–gluon plasma.
What the heck is quark–gluon plasma, you ask?
Well, it's basically the stuff that existed right after the Big Bang, when the universe was so hot and dense that even atoms couldn't form.
Quarks and gluons are the tiny particles that make up protons and neutrons, which in turn make up atoms.
In normal conditions, quarks and gluons are bound together by a strong force, but in quark–gluon plasma, they are free to roam around like a hot mess.
The quark–gluon plasma can help us understand how the universe evolved from its initial state to what we see today.
It can also help us test some of the fundamental theories of physics, such as quantum chromodynamics and general relativity.
Now, you need a lot of energy and a lot of gold to make the quark–gluon plasma.
Yes, gold.
You see, gold atoms have a lot of protons and neutrons in their nuclei, which means a lot of quarks and gluons to work with.
You also need a giant machine like the LHC or the RHIC (that's short for Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) to smash those gold atoms together at near-light speed.
When that happens, a tiny fireball is created that lasts for a fraction of a second and reaches temperatures hotter than anything else in the universe.
The fireballs are so small and short-lived that they don't affect anything else around them.
They also don't create any new elements or radiation that could harm us or the environment.
They just give us a glimpse into the past and the future of our amazing universe.
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