The Relativistic Heavy Ion Colider, Is a Big Particle Accelerator

We have now three basic building blocks that make up all the matter, or at least all the visible matter in the universe. And with these three things, you can make anything you like. We don't actually think of particles as being the fundamental building blocks of the universe. They are manifestations of something even deeper, something more fundamental. These are rather strange objects called quantum fields. Every electron in your body is a little knot of energy, a little vibration or ripple, moving about in this electron field. So once you put some energy into a quantum field, which is an incredibly boring name for what's known as the standard model of particle physics, we start to understand how our universe works.