system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How do colliders aim atoms so that they actually hit each other?
gpt
It's not quite correct to say that individual particles are set up for collision. Rather, streams of particles, or "beams", which actually consist of large numbers of individual particles, are aimed such that a high probability of collision exists in the detection area.  The beam line is just an evacuated tube, with an extremely high level vacuum maintained to prevent unwanted collisions. The beams themselves are steered with strong electric and magnetic fields, so as to keep the beam centred in the beam line. The obvious consequence of this is that you can't steer uncharged particles, so any experiments using neutral particles must be set up to use them as a stationary target.