On space-time evolution of nuclear collisions at CERN-SPS energies

Sire make an attempt to combine information from different CERN-SPS data on nuclear interactions to get a rough picture of the space-time evolution of these collisions. Topics discussed include: formation time of hadrons, energy densities reached in heavy-ion interactions, dependence of longitudinal radii R(L) on nucleon numbers of colliding nuclei, e(+)e(-) and strangeness production and J/Psi suppression. We argue that the CERN-SPS data on heavy-ion collisions might be consistent with the picture of the space-time evolution consisting of a stage of intermediate gluons, with duration of 0.5-2,0 fm/c depending on the size of the system, followed by the stage of interacting hadron gas. The behaviour of hadron gas is supposed to be strongly influenced by the formation time of hadrons and its Lorentz dilation.