How do physicists know that particles observed during collisions are actual particles and not random pieces of the nucleons flying apart?
Question: How do physicists know that particles observed during collisions are actual particles and not random pieces of the nucleons flying apart? What if smashing protons and neutrons together was analagous to smashing two glass jars together at high speed? The pieces would give almost no information about how the nucleus works! Alternatively, what if new particles were created during collisions that do not exist in normal nuclei? Wouldn’t particle physics then be way off course in it’s understanding of the atom? Shawn Hi Leon Lederman used to joke that smashing two protons together was similar to colliding two garbage cans and watching all the garbage spill out! (Leon won the Noble prize for his discoveries using proton-proton collisions.) Protons are composed of three quarks, as are neutrons. When these particles collide the quarks couple to strong force field through a kind of particle called a “colored gluon.” These gluons can interact with each other and produce other gluons and
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