[Martin]

http://www.bnl.gov/r..._movie-lrg.mpeg

movie of a gold on gold collision at relativistic speeds

the two gold ions approaching each other look like pancakes because they are flattened (from the stationary observer standpoint) by going near the speed of light

this just a movie but the real thing is done at the RHIC
(relativistic heavy ion collider)

for a moment they think, there is so much energy in the little fireball when the two golds collide that protons and neutrons boil out their quarks
so there is a cloud of free quarks and gluons
but it quickly cools (back to more normal particles) and expands


Here is a general discription of what happens at RHIC
http://www.bnl.gov/rhic/heavy_ion.htm

I gather that a typical collision could have energy 200 GeV

[5614]

how can they prove that neutrons/protons seperate into quarks?

what are all the different colours in the video?

what are the grey circle things which move inwards in the video?

"Traveling at 99.95% the speed of light," can i have a go!???!?

how do they get particles to that speed?

why do they need to remove the outter level/cloud of electrons?

soz for the all the questions... im interested!!!

[ecoli]

5614 said:

how can they prove that neutrons/protons seperate into quarks?

By smashing atoms together, they come out with a quark-gluon plasma.

5614 said:

how do they get particles to that speed?

Electromagnetism, I do believe.