Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’ (2022)
quantamagazine.org63 points by tzury 10 hours ago
63 points by tzury 10 hours ago
> The results suggested that in even higher-energy collisions, the proton would appear as a cloud made up almost entirely of gluons. The gluon dandelion is exactly what QCD predicts.
I find the proton as a gluon dandelion cloud enthralling
> But decades of research have revealed a deeper truth
Truth is a strange thing in science. In normal language people would say “our latest interpretation”. Science would be more honest if it used language honestly.
It's a pop sci magazine, of course they use language like that. Actual academic papers are different.
I get what you’re saying, but the measurements are real. In some sense they are the truth.
In the article this refers to the finding that the quark is more complex than three valence quarks.
The measurements indicating that the three-quark-model is incomplete are overwhelmingly conclusive, so some degree of certainty in the language is warranted in my view.
Not sure what this has to do with the article, it just seems like a nitpick. What did science do to you?
The implication of this framing is that neutrons are considerably simpler.
I find that rather surprising.
Where are you getting that implication? I didn't see anything in the article suggesting that neutrons were simple and I would share your skepticism if someone claimed they were. The fact that neutrons can spontaneously decay into protons (plus other stuff) suggests otherwise.
Neutrons are just as complex, they’re much harder to study though.
If it was possible to build a direct neutron accelerator/collider, I suspect we'd get some new physics pretty quickly.
Analysing hand-me-down neutron events from indirect collisions isn't quite as useful.
Neutrons are not that different from protons. The decay from neutrons to protons is pretty well understood, and there’s no reason to think that the nature of quark/gluon interactions in a neutron are significantly different from those in a proton. What kind of new physics are you imagining we’d get?
Of course more experimental data is a good thing, but in this case it doesn’t seem obvious that it would lead to anything really new.
I don't expect that to be the case, it's likely that the article simply focuses on the proton.