Well i wasnt referring to parting quarks from others i was refering to splitting a quark into its component parts. Now i dont know all things about all areas of physics but there is a way physicists can 'factor up' if u will, he amount of energy required to split it, its something to do with the amount of energy it contains or the energy required to split apart an object orders of magnitude lighter or less energetic or whatever im not sure. basiclly to get an object of any mass to high enough a velocity to split a quark would require crazy amounts of energy, again im not sure on the exact details but better mathematicians than I (infact mathameticians considered the best there is) have speculated it would require a larger input of energy than exists. as for quarks not being able to exist alone this is true, however... proton-proton collisions at a large enough velocity have shown that after the collision u get 2 protons out, momentum is NOT conserved but a new particle appears, after doing all the sums all the mass/energy balances and no laws are actually broken, what is THEORIZED to happen is that 'whatever' makes up one proton collides with part of whatever makes up another proton, this mystery object is flung out of one proton, something happens and the original proton regains this mystery object and a new object appear (look up pi meson or other strange objects) ill now explain in detail, ASSUMIG quarks do exist, what happens. 3 quarks are flung towards 3 other quarks, one quark from each proton collides, one quark gets flung out of a proton, as it travels furthar and furthar the strong force between the quark and its old companions gains energy and forms what is called a flux tube, a region of high energy/large force whatever, this flux tube continues to gain strength and be streched (now im not good enough to explain the science on the next bit) the flux tube 'breaks' and forms a quark-anti quark pair. the new quark from the flux tube returns to the proton and all is well with it, the anti quark pairs with the originally flung quark and forms a very short lived meson. which then decays or rather annihilates into energy. i do not have the material at hand to describe HOW the meson is observed ill leave that to you guys to accept ur scientists arnt lying. this shows that protons arnt fundamental and are in fact made up of smaller objects. Points here are A: one of the protons travells close to lightspeed before collision (how fast must something travel to split a quark????) B: quarks are observed just not alone but as part of a particle anti particle pair for a short time. C: although momentum appear to not be conserved amongst the protons they arnt fundamental and therefore once ALL things are considered laws arnt brken. As for qluons, well they dont form particles, they are at best fluctuations of the strong forcei gluons are to the strong force what photons are to light. light can travel, well forever technically, given enough time infinate distances, strong force acts over a distance smaller than an atomic nucleus, its the reason that ur positive protons dont fly away from each other due to electrostactic repulsion (ever wonder about that?) without the strong force (which appears to apply only to quarks) there would be NO nuclei. the fact we exist is evidence for objects smaller than protons (scientists call them quarks) objects like these dont have a 'size' size is irrelevent they are quantum sizes, i gather a quark is at the planck length. btw if the planck length is the absolute smallest anything can be im puzzled to see how u can get anything smaller. an object at planck scale has no size, its the starting point for all larger sizes to be measured. its a bit like asking what is smaller than the smallest possible division of time. heres another point about objects at these sizes, recent research has said that objects of a certain type (dont give me grief im not arguing im stating what iv heard/read) like single atoms can be placed in a single quantum wavelength, i.e in the space taken up by a single atom u can place infinate numbers of the same atom, in the space reserved in the universe for usually one object u can put infinate numbers as long as they are unable to be distinguished. this is something i read not some thing i know to be a fact but its interesting, quantum wavelength sized blackholes someone said, but we as a species arnt close to that. yet
