The inside of a proton endures more pressure than anything else we’ve seen
For the first time, scientists used experimental data to estimate the pressure inside a proton
FEELING THE PRESSURE Extreme pressures are found within the proton, scientists report. The proton contains three particles called quarks (illustrated) as well as gluons, which hold the particle together.
ArSciMed/Science Source
Pity the protons: Those little particles are under a lot of pressure. Protons’ innards are squeezed harder than any other substance we have measured, a new study finds.
“It’s really the highest pressure we have ever seen,” says physicist Volker Burkert, a coauthor of the study, published in the May 17 Nature. Protons break the pressure record set by neutron stars, the incredibly dense dead stars that can form when a massive star explodes and its core collapses, squeezing more mass than the sun’s into a remnant the size of a city.
The pressure in the proton’s center averages a million trillion trillion times the strength of Earth’s atmospheric pressure, report Burkert and colleagues, from Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va. That’s around 10 times the pressure found inside a neutron star. Previously, scientists had
