[jmts]

I don't understand a lot of it either, however my intuition tells me that it can be interpreted like just another state change.

My understanding of the transitions of matter between solid, liquid, and gaseous states is that it is primarily due to the amount of energy in the system. The more energy a particle has, the more likely it is to break its bonds with other particles around it and transition to another state. We tend to think of individual atoms being in some way the 'final' state once we reach some gaseous form, however it is not that great a leap to consider putting so much energy into the nucleus of an atom that its nucleus 'evaporates' into protons and neutrons (hadrons), and from there putting so much energy into those hadrons that they too evaporate into their constituent quarks. The difference in each case being that enough energy must be present to overcome each necessary nuclear force.

To be fair though, this is all very theoretical from what I've just read, and we don't truly know what happens yet.

[lucb1e]

Not sure why you were downvoted, I guess someone thought you were wrong? Anyway, I think it was a helpful explanation -- if anyone thinks it's wrong, they should (briefly) comment instead of downvoting.