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For All This Time, Protons Have Been Hiding Secret Mass. We Just Found It.

17
Jackie Appel
·4 min read
illustration of the internal structure of a proton a proton is a subatomic particle with a positive electrical charge, found inside the nucleus of an atom alongside neutrons protons are made up of smaller particles called quarks, which come in six different flavours in a proton, there are two up quarks and one down quark, represented here by the letters d and u subatomic particles made up of quarks are generally termed hadrons in addition, hadrons made of odd numbers of quarks, like protons and neutrons, are called baryons the quarks within hadrons are held together by the strong nuclear force, carried by the so called gluon here represented by helices
Protons Were Hiding Secret Mass. We Just Found It.MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY


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  • Researchers just found out where the secret mass of protons is located.

  • Physicists have long known that protons are more massive than the stuff that makes them up, but we didn’t know where that mass was located in the particle.

  • It turns out, it was right in the center of the proton this whole time.

Usually, when we talk about mass, we’re talking about how much stuff is in an object. Everything from your body to a black hole is made up of matter, and adding all that matter together gives you the mass of an object.

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But, just like everything else, mass can get a little screwy in the quantum world. Physicists have been puzzling over why protons are more massive than the matter that makes them up for a long time, and recently, they seem to have figured it out.

Protons are physically made up of three smaller pieces called valence quarks, the absolute fundamental constituents of matter. They're not made of anything else—a quark is as small and basic as you can go. But adding up the mass of the quarks alone doesn’t give you the mass of the proton.

Over the course of several decades, researchers have pieced together what makes up the rest of the mass. First, the movements of the quarks actually produce mass. Second, mass is generated by the force holding all the quarks together. Known as the strong force, it manifests as something called “gluons.” And finally, interactions between the quarks and the gluons produce the rest of the mass.

If you think a lot of this sounds more like energy than mass, just remember our good old friend, e=mc2.

So, over time, we’ve pretty much theorized out what is creating all this extra mass that “shouldn’t be there.” But even though we’ve known it exists, we haven’t been able to pinpoint where it’s coming from. You wouldn’t think much could hide in a space as small as a single proton, but this bonus mass has proved that thought wrong for a long time.