text: Free quarks probably existed in the extreme conditions of the very early universe until about 30 microseconds after the Big Bang, in a very hot gas of free quarks, antiquarks and gluons. This gas is called quark–gluon plasma (QGP), since the quark-interaction charge (color charge) is mobile and quarks and gluons move around. This is possible because at a high temperature the early universe is in a different vacuum state, in which normal matter cannot exist but quarks and gluons can; they are deconfined (able to exist independently as separate unbound particles). In order to recreate this deconfined phase of matter in the laboratory it is necessary to exceed a minimum temperature, or its equivalent, a minimum energy density. Scientists achieve this using particle collisions at extremely high speeds, where the energy released in the collision can raise the subatomic particles' energies to an exceedingly high level, sufficient for them to briefly form a tiny amount of quark–gluon plasma that can be studied in laboratory experiments for little more than the time light needs to cross the QGP fireball, thus about 10 s. After this brief time the hot drop of quark plasma evaporates in a process called hadronization. This is so since practically all QGP components flow out at relativistic speed. In this way, it is possible to study conditions akin to those in the early Universe at the age of 10–40 microseconds.
  Discovery of this new QGP state of matter has been announced both at CERN and at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). Preparatory work, allowing for these discoveries, was carried out at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) at the Bevalac. New experimental facilities, FAIR at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research (GSI) and NICA at JINR, are under construction. Strangeness as a signature of QGP was first explored in 1983. Comprehensive experimental evidence about its properties is being assembled. Recent work by the ALICE collaboration at CERN has opened a new path to study of QGP and strangeness production in very high energy pp collisions.