The strongest fundamental force of nature generates ~96 percent of the mass of the visible universe and binds together the building blocks of quantum chromodynamics, quarks and gluons, within the proton. At temperatures of a few trillion Kelvin or densities tens of trillions times more dense than iron, these quarks are no longer bound within protons and can form entirely new states of matter. It is possible to unlock these quark phases in heavy-ion collisions that reach the hottest temperatures on Earth or potentially in the core of neutron stars that have densities many times larger than that of a nucleus. In this talk, Jaki Noronha-Hostler of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will explore different ways to study the phases of matter of quarks from the lab using heavy-ion collision and in the cosmos using X-Ray measurements of neutron stars or gravitational waves from binary neutron star mergers.