Collisions between particles inside the Large Hadron Collider atom smasher have created what looks like a new form of matter. The new kind of matter is called color-glass condensate, and is a liquidlike wave of gluons, which are elementary particles related to the strong force that sticks quarks together inside protons and neutrons.

Scientists didn’t expect this kind of matter would result from the type of particle collisions going on at the LHC at the time. However, it may explain some odd behavior seen inside the machine, which is a giant loop where particles race around underneath Switzerland and France.