HERA Detects Quarks and Antiquarks

HERA's electrons rebounded from a jumble of low momentum quarks, and their antimatter counterparts, antiquarks. The results confirmed a sophisticated and outlandish theory that had by then replaced Gellman and Zweig's quark model. According to QCD, gluons can pick up momentary spikes of energy. With this energy, a gluon splits into a quark and an antiquark, each carrying just a tiny bit of momentum before the pair annihilates and disappears.