As the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organisation for Nuclear Reserch or CERN goes on full steam seeking answers to nature’s most abiding mysteries, we have been given a glimpse into how the universe originated in a precursor to the study in France.

The glimpse has come from the relativistic heavy ion collider (RHIC, pronounced Rick), the giant atom smasher housed at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state. The knowledge gained at RHIC will stand us in very good form at LHC. The billions of mini bangs which happened inside the 3.14 km tunnel buried about 12 feet underground at RHIC will lead to more unravelling of the initial moments of the universe during the Big Bang at the LHC’s 27 km tunnel 15 metres underground.

As per conventional wisdom, the universe was created in a cataclysmic explosion about fourteen billion years ago. But what created the Big Bang? What happened after the Big Bang? The answers go to the heart of man’s search for answers about existence.

It is certain that gravity or rather gravitational force would have been incredibly strong, at least one hundred trillion times the pull we feel on earth. Discovered by Isaac Newton some five hundred years ago, with the legendary gospel of an apple falling from the tree, it is the simplest and most studied of the forces. At the beginning of all beginnings, gravity was so strong that a different set of laws of physics have to be applied to understand it — we have to move from Newton’s classical physics to quantum mechanics of Paul Dirac, Erwin Schrodinger and others.

At that primordial epoch, all fundamental forces of nature were united in one supergrand force — gravity. The weak interaction of radioactivity, the electromagnetism of light and the strong force working in the interior of atomic nucleus were all united in one singular force.

Then, very quickly, within less than a millionth of a millionth of a second the fundamental forces separated from each other. First gravity went its way. Then, the electromagnetic force separated from the weak interaction of radioactivity. But there were no particles or substance in the universe — only enormous energy, unimaginably hot.

In the Big Bang drama, the universe was going through cataclysmic changes within a very short time, expanding from the so-called inflationary event, to an epoch, a millionth of a second later. According to contemporary wisdom, at this point the universe consisted of the most elementary building blocks of matter, the quarks and gluons at an awesome temperature of two trillion degrees centigrade or about a million times the heat in the interior of the sun.

From quarks and gluons emerged the protons, neutrons and mesons that form the nucleus of an atom. At RHIC, scientists recently saw the first glimpses of that primordial epoch by colliding two nuclei of gold, creating the hottest tiny spec of matter every encountered by man. The temperature inside the tunnel was twice the level at which the protons and neutrons are expected to melt into quarks and gluons.

The peep only lasted milliseconds, but it was the first look at what happened during the millionth second after the Big Bang. The two main detectors attached to RHIC that could discern the results of the collision — Phenix and Star — both had some India connection: the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Mumbai was involved in building Phenix and the Cyclotron Centre at Kolkata with Star.

The detectors measured the light particles radiating out from the debris of the violent collision on annihilation of quark and its antiparticle or antiquarks. The signal was unambiguous and the visibility very clear. It may not have been as good as the “Eureka” moment described by Stephen Hawking, but pretty close.

From here, we would take a big jump in mankind’s knowledge as atoms smash against each other in the Large Hadron Collider underneath France and Switzerland. As man goes about unravelling the mysteries of universe, about what happened in the first few moments in the story of existence, hopefully the other chapters would reveal themselves, throwing light on how our solar system and our earth came into existence, giving rise to an intelligent life form called human being.

The writer is former director of Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics and at present Homi Jehangir Bhabha distinguished chair professor at Department of Atomic Energy