Influx wrote:For example, you never answered the question about the blue lines. The reason they curve so, is cause the particles are are in a magnetic field. Since threads don't spiral inwards in a presence of a magnetic field you conveniently ignored that question.
I ignored it because, to my eye, I cannot actually track a single blue line that originates at the center, goes out, curves, and comes back in to the center. I see a lot of curved ones that criss cross each other but I cannot conclude that a single line that originates at the center actually terminates at the center. Otoh I see a lot of blue lines terminating at the exterior.
Influx wrote:
Instead you assumed that I was saying that ternary collisions are what we are seeing. When in fact what I said was
Simple visiting the appropriate Wikipedia page shows that this is a beam- beam collision! Not a single atom atom collision
This indicates a breakdown of knowledge or language or something. Beams don't collide, atoms/ions collide. "Beam" is just a shorthand term for "a group of ions traveling in a direction".
If we had a group of cars going west and another going north, we might talk about "traffic collisions". But the cars are colliding, not the "traffic". The word "traffic" is just a convenient shorthand to talk about many individual car-car collisions.
Similarly, "beam-beam collision" is another way of saying "many ion-ion collisions". What we are recording in the data are individual binary events. Of course in any experimental setup we will record many many binary events, replicating measurements is standard experimental procedure. So if your objection was all based around "time averaging" or "replicate measurements" from the start then you were objecting to standard chemical physics experimental methods. It does not change the fact that each individual measurement is a single binary collision of two gold ions.
You also quote numbers as if they bolster your case, I assume because they sound impressive. But to anyone who works with beams they are the opposite. You quoted "thousands of collisions per second". That's nothing! A second is an eternity in these kinds of experiments. A collision every millisecond? A millisecond is practically an eon. In my little dinky 70 square foot machine we *routinely* record thousands of events per second. And yes, we register each one individually. The timescale on our little apparatus is microseconds, making millisecond-separated events quite well spaced actually.
So do you think at Brookhaven they somehow have difficulty with registering an event every millisecond?
Influx wrote:
Notice it says beam beam collision! At what point is it a single gold atom? Plus it says EVENTS and not EVENT. Apparently you don't pay attention to the description of your own damn links. And that these collision events happen is not open for question, so why are you saying that I question them?
Yes, it records events. This means "it records an event, then records an event, then records an event, ... etc." It does not mean it records a bunch of events simultaneously. Also, as I said, beams don't collide. The entities that comprise a beam (the ions) collide.
Influx wrote:
Than I posted this quote
RHIC's beam travels at 99.995% the speed of light (186,000 miles per second, or 300,000,000 meters per second).
RHIC's beam is not continuous -- instead, it's made up of 57 separate "bunches", each containing billions of ions.
When the machine runs, thousands of subatomic collisions take place each second.
Each collision sends out a shower of thousands of subatomic particles.
Thousands a second? So?
Influx wrote:
So where did I
altonhare wrote:... rant about how they couldn't possibly accelerate two gold atoms
Admittedly you didn't say exactly these words, it is my inference based on trying to figure out what your actual objection is. Of which I can see 2:
1) The gold ions collide 3, 4, or more at a time too often to be sure that the data is representative of binary collisions.
2) The experimentalists took many measurements of binary collisions and included them all in their quantitative analysis and final results, as is standard procedure.
I didn't think you were objecting to performing experiments in replicate. It seemed more likely that you simply didn't know that higher order collisions simply don't happen at these densities and velocities. When I expressed this to you, you continued to argue, which I took at stubbornness or willful ignorance.
So let's clear this up. What was your actual original objection? Was it one of these two or another? Do you think it is impossible to resolve events that occur a millisecond apart? Do you think it is impossible to be certain that all the collisions occurring are binary? Do you think that taking many measurements and performing quantitative analysis on them to give a final results is erroneous?
What was the reason for your original objection?
Yet going to the picture that started it all you have not the slightest idea how it was made, even though I asked you.
Influx wrote:What I did question is if that picture was the result of a single binary collision of gold ions. And I still maintain that it is not.
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This picture represents what we would typically expect as the result of a single binary collision between gold ions. Your objection, taken at face value, is completely worthless! Nobody in chemical physics ever reports single data points! We store them in the computer or wherever, so we can produce them when necessary, but single data points are
never presented in a final paper, presentation, etc. I apologize for not taking your objection at face value, and instead assuming you had no problem with replicate measurements treated analytically to reduce the volume of data into a meaningful result.
Perhaps we can end this if you can simply admit that your original objection was irrelevant, or tell us all what you really objected to.
It don't look good on you.
I think someones finger is inching closer to the ban button. 
