Scientists using a giant atom smasher said they have created a new state of matter -- a hot, dense liquid made out of basic atomic particles -- and said it shows what the early universe looked like for a very, very brief time. For a tiny fraction of a second after the "big bang" birth of the universe, all matter was in the form of this liquid, called a quark-gluon plasma, the researchers said. "We have a new state of matter," said Sam Aronson, associate laboratory director for High Energy and Nuclear Physics at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.