First Measurement of Distribution of Pressure Inside a Proton (phys.org)

Okian Warrior shares a report from Phys.Org: Inside every proton in every atom in the universe is a pressure cooker environment that surpasses the atom-crushing heart of a neutron star. That's according to the first measurement of a mechanical property of subatomic particles, the pressure distribution inside the proton, which was carried out by scientists at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. The nuclear physicists found that the proton's building blocks, the quarks, are subjected to a pressure of 100 decillion Pascal (1035) near the center of a proton, which is about 10 times greater than the pressure in the heart of a neutron star. The result was recently published in the journal Nature.

Comments

Re:Is there energy to be had here?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a physicist but theoretically it should be possible. Quarks make up only 1% of the mass of a proton [1], the remaining 99% is the binding energy. If we could harvest that, we could get even more energy per kg of fuel than from nuclear fission.

[1] https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=30159

1035?

[johannesg]

1035 doesn't sound so bad. 10^35 on the other hand...

Jefferson Lab Open Day May 19th

[OzPeter]

If you are in the Newport News, VA area on Saturday, the Jefferson Lab is having an open day from 9AM to 3PM. https://www.jlab.org/

Also the press release from the lab itself about the Proton pressure QUARKS FEEL THE PRESSURE IN THE PROTON

Re:Macroscopic concept?

[CustomSolvers2]

pressure was a more macroscopic concept

Pressure is force per unit of area and is relevant in any context where an area exists. No matter how small quarks are, they are 3D objects and forces applied on them can be modelled via pressure.

Like density or "edges"

Same than before: size doesn't matter for any of this. See the proton as an sphere and the elements inside it having certain distribution.

Color force

[Okian Warrior]

In thought strong force refers to the force that binds the protons inside the necleus.... Do quarks even need a force holding them together? Like does opposite spin quarks repel each other?

The color force holds three quarks together in a proton or neutron. Protons have charge, so there's significant repulsive force among them inside the nucleus.

A quark inside a proton can be bound (by color) to the two other quarks in that proton, but it's also physically near the quarks of a neighboring proton. It can "look outside" it's own particle and see other nearby quarks, and feel the color force from those as well. That's what we call the strong force, and it keeps the nucleus together.

If heavy nucleii were composed completely of protons, the aggregate electromagnetic repulsion would overwhelm the strong force and the nucleus would fly apart. Adding a few neutrons to the mix allows the same sort of neighboring-color-attraction without the EM repulsion, and makes the nucleus stable.

Re:Is there energy to be had here?

[BitterOak]

The problem is that you would need to convert a quark to an antiquark, which is a bit tricky.

You can't turn quarks into anti-quarks, and this is directly related to the conservation of baryon number. Protons and neutrons have baryon number 1 each, while mesons have baryon number 0, and as far as we can tell, baryon number is a strictly conserved quantity. Since protons and neutrons are the lightest baryons, the "sub-nuclear" fission described is, as far as we know, not possible under the laws of physics as we understand them.