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

[JuliaL]

Kind of, yes. If you hit it with less energy, you don't see nothing though, you see bound states doing something. The objects of the theory are different particles at that level of coarse grainy observation. The transition between the two worlds (called the matching of one theory -that of protons, neutrons etc- to the other - that of quarks and gluons-) is very challenging and only partly understood, precisely because the interactions become so strong at that point, and strong interactions means difficult to calculate.

I'm still at the billiard ball level of particle visualization.
Are wave packets a better metaphor? The waves I'm familiar with oscillate some medium.
Is there an equivalent in QCD?
Do gluon packets travel from baryon to baryon? If so, is this in what you've called gluon and quark fields?
Is there anything in the math that explains how they get started?
Somehow, this all hangs together in the best empirically verified theory in all of science.