Traveling towards each other at 99.95% the speed of light, the two gold ions appear flat, instead of spherical, due to the relativistic effects, which occur at such speeds.
In the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, all matter is thought to have consisted of quarks (the basic building block of matter), and gluons (the particles that hold together quarks), at extremely high temperatures and densities. This plasma then cooled and coalesced into the particles that now make up all objects in the universe.		The Terabytes of raw data are collected and stored into the BNL HPSS system (New York). Subsets of this raw data are sent to the Riken HPSS system (Japan), and to the UC Berkley HPSS system (California) for analysis. The data derived from the analysis is also stored back into the HPSS.
	The two ions collide, smashing into one another and then passing through each other. Some of the energy they had before the collision is transformed into intense heat and new particles.
	If conditions are right, the collision "melts" the protons and neutrons and, for a brief instant, liberates the quarks and gluons.
The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), at Brookhaven National Lab (BNL), is a world-class scientific research facility. Hundreds of physicists, from around the world, use RHIC to study what the universe may have looked like in the first few moments after its creation. RHIC drives two intersecting beams of gold ions head-on, in a subatomic collision. What physicists learn from these collisions may help us understand more about why the physical world works the way it does, from the smallest subatomic particles, to the largest stars.
	Just after the collision, thousands more particles form as the area cools off. Each of these particles provides a clue as to what occurred inside the collision zone.