Accelerators like RHIC and LHC routinely turn energy into matter by accelerating pieces of atoms near the speed of light and smashing them into one another. The 2012 discovery of the Higgs particle at the LHC is a notable example. At the time, the Higgs was the final unobserved particle in the Standard Model, a theory that describes the fundamental forces and building blocks of atoms. Impressive as it is, physicists know the Standard Model explains only about 4% of the matter and energy in the universe. The ions are nuclei of massive elements like gold or lead, and ion...