Centauro, Geminion and multipion events

The authors discuss the relevance of Centauro and Geminion-like events and multihadron production as studied at cosmic-ray energies for SPS collider and ISR experiments. The experimental findings and the recent theoretical conjectures are briefly reviewed. It is suggested that in very-high-energy collisions excited quark matter hadronizes either via pionization or via baryonization without production of free quarks. Using cosmic-ray information they estimate a production cross-section for mini Centauro and Geminion events as high as 30% at SPS collider energies. (12 refs).