Just How Small Is the Proton?; October 2010; Scientific American Magazine; by Davide Castelvecchi; 1 Page(s)
Physicists have been scratching their heads since July, when a research team announced that the proton, the basic building block of matter, is 4 percent smaller than previously thought. The finding, published in Nature, clashes with theoretical predictions based on quantum electrodynamics, or QED, the fundamental theory of the electromagnetic force that had passed the most stringent tests in physics.
Randolf Pohl of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, and his collaborators used a laser to probe exotic, man-made hydrogen atoms in which elementary particles known as muons replaced the usual electrons orbiting the single-proton nuclei. Laser energy made the atoms fluoresce at characteristic x-ray wavelengths. Those wavelengths reflected a number of subtle effects, including the little known fact that an orbiting particle—be it a muon or an electron—often flies straight through the proton. That is possible because protons are composed of smaller elementary particles (mainly three quarks), and most of the space inside a proton is actually empty.
