Here’s something to think about: we’ve never directly detected quarks! Ever!

We can tell they exist from deep-inelastic scattering, which tell us protons and neutrons can break into 3, and we can “free” a quark from a hadron (proton/neutron/meson) …but we can’t see that free quark. That free quark has already paired with an anti-quark and is now a meson.

It’s gone now, bye bye!

Same thing with gluons, the force that holds these quarks together to make mesons and baryons (protons/neutron). You can never get a lone gluon.

The only time you MIGHT see them alone is above the Hagedorn temperature, which is drum roll please …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2’000’000’000’000 Kelvin! That’s 2 Terra Kelvin, or 3.6 trillion Fahrenheit!

In-flipping-sane!

Now you know what goes on in my brain at night when I can’t sleep.