The udQM they're talking about is in a very different regime than the quark matter produced at RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) and other colliders. In th

The udQM they're talking about is in a very different regime than the quark matter produced at RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) and other colliders. In those, heavy ions are collided ultrarelativistically (speed just under C) and for a very brief instant, quarks and gluons are liberated from their confinement inside proton and neutrons to become quark-gluon plasma, or QGC. There are up and down quarks just like in normal protons/neutrons, but also other quarks can be created (strange being the most common). At high enough energies and with particular kinematics, you can make all six quark types: see BaBar experiment, LHC, Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) experiments. In the paper, they're talking about udQM being more stable at zero temperature and pressure, basically "competing" with normal elements. The wiki diagram is useful for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark%E2%80%93gluon_plasma#/media/File:Phases_of_Nuclear_Matter.JPG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark%E2%80%93gluon_plasma#/me...