ALICE Wins Breakthrough Prize with UNAM Researchers

Researchers and students from UNAM are part of the recently awarded ALICE project (A Large Ion Collider Experiment), recipient of the prestigious 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

This international collaboration currently brings together 1,869 scientists from institutions around the world.

The prize included $3 million in award funds, $500,000 of which was allocated to the ALICE collaboration. These funds were donated to the CERN & Society Foundation to support doctoral scholarships for young scientists from participating institutions.

Antonio Ortiz Velásquez, a physicist trained at UNAM and currently a researcher in the Department of High Energy Physics at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences and a member of the project’s editorial board, explained that ALICE is the leading experiment in heavy-ion collisions. It investigates the outcomes of these collisions, in which ions travel at 99.99% the speed of light, and the properties of matter change dramatically.

Ortiz Velásquez noted that such collisions create a new phase of matter known as quark-gluon plasma (QGP). This strongly interacting state closely resembles the conditions of the Universe just a millionth of a second after the Big Bang.

ALICE’s major contribution to physics lies in its ability to explore the behavior of matter at the smallest scales and under extreme conditions. The prize specifically honors the collaboration’s pioneering work in understanding quark-gluon plasma.