Long-anticipated experiments that use light to mimic gravity are revealing the distribution of energies, forces and pressures inside a subatomic particle for the first time.
Physicists have begun to explore the proton as if it were a subatomic planet. Cutaway maps display newfound details of the particle’s interior. The proton’s core features pressures more intense than in any other known form of matter. Halfway to the surface, clashing vortices of force push against each other. And the “planet” as a whole is smaller than previous experiments had suggested.
They found that in the heart of the proton, the strong force generates pressures of unimaginable intensity — 100 billion trillion trillion pascals, or about 10 times the pressure at the heart of a neutron star.
Swirling Forces, Crushing Pressures Measured in the Proton