Protons Are Smaller Than We Thought
It seems that one of the smallest building blocks of matter is smaller than we thought.
- Be also sure to check out my other posts and follow me @kralizec and subscribe to my Youtube channel at Kralizec Gaming Youtube Channel
It seems that the previous measurements of the size of the proton are inaccurate. At least this is what researchers from the York University in Toronto claim. Their eight years worth of experiment showed that the diameter of this tiny particle is about five percent smaller than we thought so far.
Never before have we done such a comprehensive measurement. Scientists refined the diameter of the proton from 0.88 femtometers to 0.833 femtometers (10-15 m). The results don’t really change anything specific about physics (at least for the moment), they just give us a more precise measurement of something we already have. What you need to remember is that a proton doesn’t really have any solid boundaries. It’s more of a cloud which edges are formed by the strength of its positive charge.
To measure the size of such a cloud of energy we use two different methods. In the first, you shoot negatively charged particles at an atom of hydrogen. If you shoot enough particles you can then estimate an area at which there is no more positive charge. This was the way the original measurement of 0.88 femtometers was made.
The second method utilizes the detection of changes in the energy of electrons orbiting the proton. This method is based on quantum mechanics which claim that sub-atomic particles never have a precisely defined position. They say that occasionally an electron can find itself even in the center of a proton. And it precisely the measurement of changes in energy levels – also known as Lamb shift – that is used to measure the proton’s size most often.
The researchers that claim the proton is smaller used both of the methods. On top of that instead of using an electron in the second method, they used a heavier particle known as a muon which can exist in the core of the proton for a longer time allowing for longer and thus more accurate measurements.
And so, after eight years of tiny experiments, we have performed the most accurate measurement of anything ever before.
Sources:
- If you like the content I’m producing about science maybe you will like the content I produce about gaming as well! Be sure to check out my other posts!
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.
Congratulations @kralizec! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!
Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!
It's interesting that they used muon particles to make more accurate measurements. Though they are more massive than electrons, I guess that doesn't mean they're any bigger, physically. Size and mass aren't correlated when you are a point.
Quantum physics is weird.
Muons are easy beasts thanks to their mass. For instance, at the LHC, they just go straight and don't leave a mess into the detector, which makes them perfect candles for many processes. Electrons for instance, because of their mass (and electromagnetism), will shower many photons and leave a lot of hits, located within a kind of cone, in the detector. This is much harder to identify and often, we are not capable to identify them.
I hope this clarifies.
It is a pity the article is not open access. I would have been really interested in reading it, as their is a long story behind the proton radius problem ( a puzzle to be solved). Unfortunately, I am out of office today so that I can't check the scientific article... :(
I understand that scientific journals need to make money, but yeah, having them be open-access would be awesome. I personally can abuse my friends access (he works at a large university) to a lot of them, but for a lot of people they are just not an option. Sadly.
I am not very happy with these authors, because all best journals of the field are open access. Even if they wanted to go for a non-open access way, they could have dropped their paper on the arxiv before submitting (as 99.95% of the scientists of our field are doing).
Anyways, don't worry. I will check tomorrow from the office.
PS: I really like what you do on the steemstem tag. I think that I have never said it :)
Thank you for your compliment on my work :) I appreciate it very much.
I will admit that I originally did more gaming stuff but truthfully, I have found that science actually makes me more... proud? I guess that is the correct word for the feeling :)
I hope one day we will have a larger community to contribute and ask questions. Also specialists from all fields :)
Slowly and slowly we will get there!
This post has been voted on by the SteemSTEM curation team and voting trail. It is elligible for support from @curie and @minnowbooster.
If you appreciate the work we are doing, then consider supporting our witness @stem.witness. Additional witness support to the curie witness would be appreciated as well.
For additional information please join us on the SteemSTEM discord and to get to know the rest of the community!
Please consider using the steemstem.io app and/or including @steemstem in the list of beneficiaries of this post. This could yield a stronger support from SteemSTEM.
Knowledge blog bro.