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The Proton Just Got Smaller
inflame writes "A new paper published in Nature has said that the proton may be smaller than we previously thought. The article states 'The difference is so infinitesimal that it might defy belief that anyone, even physicists, would care. But the new measurements could mean that there is a gap in existing theories of quantum mechanics. "It's a very serious discrepancy," says Ingo Sick, a physicist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, who has tried to reconcile the finding with four decades of previous measurements. "There is really something seriously wrong someplace."' Would this indicate new physics if proven?"
Obviously, these people never heard of the "Squeezer" from John Varley's Red Thunder.
Living With a Nerd
There are plenty of calculations and derived values that depended on the old mass of the proton. Even with our previous inaccuracy, calculations with the old value came out right.
First the Neutrino has mass, then they can't find the Higgs Boson and now
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim_theory
Heim theory also calculated the mass of the proton as greater than measured previously!