The collision of two gravitationally interacting, ultra-relativistic, extended sources is being examined. This investigation classifies the transverse distributions that are collided according to whether one or more apparent horizons may or may not be formed in a flat background. The study extends to the thermodynamical properties of the objects that are created, which exhibit a universal behavior in their entropy. It suggests the elimination in observing black holes (BHs) at the LHC in the absence of extra dimensions while proposes novel mechanism of how extra dimensions could allow BHs creation at TeV scales. The investigation is carried further to AdS5 backgrounds and makes connections with the implications for the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) formation in heavy ion collisions. The study shows that QGP is formed if and only if the (central collision) energy is sufficiently large compared to the transverse scale of the corresponding gauge theory colliding stress-tensor. Despite being in accordance with the current intuition and data, this is the first theoretical work that captures such a feature: QGP is formed only at high enough energies compared to ΛQCD, even for central processes. Incorporating weak coupling physics and in particular the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) model, a satisfactory fitting with the RHIC and the LHC data for multiplicities may be established.