5 ms·
>> The new measurement puts the size of the proton to around 0.833 femtometers, against the previously accepted figure of 0.842 femtometers. 1 femtometer = 10^
by symplee 7y ago
>> The new measurement puts the size of the proton to around 0.833 femtometers, against the previously accepted figure of 0.842 femtometers.
1 femtometer = 10^−15 metres. Also commonly called a fermi.
It's a quick read, worth the click to read how they measured it, and at least see CERN's imagined rendition of what the "turmoil of quarks and gluons" that make up a proton might look like.
- saagarjha 7y agoI was somewhat disappointed to see the rendition fail to follow color confinement :(
- pas 7y agoCould you elaborate on this please?
- saagarjha 7y agoDue to how quantum chromodynamics works, free particles should be white (or colorless). That is, their constituent particles (in this case, quarks and gluons) have a “color” (red, green, blue for quarks, and their inverses for antiquarks) and they must come together in such a way to cancel out in any free particle like a proton.
- arberavdullahu 7y ago> The new measurement puts the proton's radius to around 0.833 femtometers, which is 4 percent less than the previously accepted figure. How is 4 percent less equal to 0.833?
- bloopernova 7y agoThat artist's rendition of a proton looks like how I imagine a Shoggoth from HP Lovecraft. We really are made of just a bunch of wibbly-wobbly "stuff".
- jacquesm 7y agoWe are mostly nothing to a very very precise approximation of 100%.
- bloopernova 7y agoWell, for sure, yes. But that nothing is definitely wibbly-wobbly, right? This makes me think about just how bizarre we are at multiple levels. Quantum foam of nothing and probabilities, atoms and electrons and forces, then molecules making up DNA and cells, and then us enormously huge humans.
- jacquesm 7y agoOne of the most interesting molecules is the Ribosome, the 'player' if you wish of an RNA molecule that assembles proteins out of the soup it floats in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome It's a real life nano-assembler and there are billions of them in your body (and about 10 million give or take per cell).
- bloopernova 7y ago> 10 million give or take per cell That just astounds and confounds me. An astonishing amount of stuff in just one cell! We're amazing beings at so many levels. Thank you for that link :)
- jacquesm 7y agoWait until you realize that the total length of all the DNA in a single cell is 3 Km... How's that for folding@home ;)