If you need a guide to RHIC physics terms and concepts, visit the physics primer page . A Microscope for the Universe's Smallest Matter Biologists and doctors use microscopes to see the tiny details of living things.
Microscopes also allow people to watch living things in action.
Similarly, RHIC will let scientists explore how Nature's smallest particles act and interact, appear and disappear. Just like many discoveries have sprung from explorations with microscopes, RHIC will yield exciting new knowledge for all humankind. RHIC will mostly use gold, one of the heaviest common elements around, because its nucleus is packed with particles. Here's one simulation of what such a collision might look like. The ions are flat, instead of their usual spherical shape, because they're going so fast.