What's really happening during an LHC collision?

It's less of a collision and more of a symphony. The Large Hadron Collider is definitely large. With a 17-mile circumference, it is the biggest collider on the planet. But the latter fraction of its name is a little misleading. That's because what collides in the LHC are the tiny pieces inside the hadrons, not the hadrons themselves. Hadrons are composite particles made up of quarks and gluons. The gluons carry the strong force, which enables the quarks to stick together and binds them into a si...