quantum chromodynamics – Quanta Magazine

Swirling Forces, Crushing Pressures Measured in the Proton

Charlie Wood — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 14:03:46 +0000

Physicists have begun to explore the proton as if it were a subatomic planet. Cutaway maps display newfound details of the particle’s interior. The proton’s core features pressures more intense than in any other known form of matter. Halfway to the surface, clashing vortices of force push against each other. And the “planet” as a whole is smaller than previous experiments had suggested.

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How to Tame the Endless Infinities Hiding in the Heart of Particle Physics

Charlie Wood — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 14:30:04 +0000

The secret to fixing a fatal flaw at the heart of quantum theory may lie in three obscure textbooks from the 1980s. But physicists can be forgiven for overlooking the potentially transformative ideas within, as the volumes appear simultaneously amateurish and intimidating. The few physical copies that exist of Jean Écalle’s magnum opus look like little more than glorified photocopies.

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Inside the Proton, the ‘Most Complicated Thing You Could Possibly Imagine’

Charlie Wood and Merrill Sherman — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 14:21:02 +0000

More than a century after Ernest Rutherford discovered the positively charged particle at the heart of every atom, physicists are still struggling to fully understand the proton. High school physics teachers describe them as featureless balls with one unit each of positive electric charge — the perfect foils for the negatively charged electrons that buzz around them. College students learn that...

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The Mysterious Forces Inside the Nucleus Grow a Little Less Strange

Charlie Wood — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 16:13:42 +0000

Billions of times each minute, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) smashes protons together, unleashing a maelstrom of energy that crystallizes into more protons, neutrons, and less familiar cousins of the nuclear particles. Some particles encounter each other as they flee the scene. What happens next — whether a given pair pulls together or pushes apart — physicists generally can’t say.

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‘Impossible’ Particle Discovery Adds Key Piece to the Strong Force Puzzle

Charlie Wood — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 14:36:02 +0000

This spring, at a meeting of Syracuse University’s quark physics group, Ivan Polyakov announced that he had uncovered the fingerprints of a semi-mythical particle. “We said, ‘This is impossible. What mistake are you making?’” recalled Sheldon Stone, the group’s leader. Polyakov went away and double-checked his analysis of data from the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment...

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