Abstract: A large heavy-ion experimental detector (ALICE), scheduled to start operating at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2008, has been specifically designed for the harsh environment of nuclear matter where it is more than 100 000 times hotter than the core of the Sun, to study the properties of a new state of nuclear matter, called quark-gluon plasma or quark matter, at very high temperatures and densities. The experiments will allow us to explore what is the physics of strongly interacting matter, how the quarks are confined inside protons and neutrons, and where the mass of quarks comes from. In this paper we give a brief introduction to the strong interaction and the quark model, asymptotic freedom and quark confinement, high energy heavy-ion collisions and quark matter, the ALICE experiments at the LHC, and the connection between quarks and the cosmos.