First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy! (Ask a particle physisicist)

[JuliaL]

That is a very smart question. So yes, on the one hand, by investing higher energy one can probe shorter distances and finds that the internal energy of these binding becomes less, and therefore quickly so much less than the energy of the whole reaction as to be irrelevant. If you invest less energy into the collision, you will probe physics at larger distances and will see interactions with, oddly, larger binding energy. At some point, this binding energy will grow beyond the energy you put into the system to make the observation in the first place. At that point, you will for this reason stop resolving the quarks, and will only see protobs, neutrons...

I've been in this situation before. Some experienced instructor will explain a situation carefully and repeatedly yet in slightly different ways, initially with little effect. Eventually I experience a revelation and with great enthusiasm repeat back to them exactly what they have been telling me over and over. I feel something new and amazing. It's pretty dull for the teacher.

So you can hit the quark-gluon conglomeration with a high energy something and not see the (low) binding energy because it gets lost in the noise of the energetic interaction. Or you can hit it with something less energetic and still see nothing because the less energetic (collision?)(interaction?) is not able to resolve the individual components.

Hubble was able to watch Pluto for a long time but not very clearly. New Horizons could see Pluto with fine resolution, but couldn't watch very long. That's some catch, that catch 22.