What holds the proton collectively— Science News, September 16, 1972
An experiment … on the CERN Laboratory in Geneva … offers an necessary clue to structural preparations deep throughout the proton…. The end result hints on the existence of a brand new and really robust elementary interplay — the method that holds [quarks] collectively contained in the protons.… Quite a lot of theorists have speculated about its nature and have even proposed an intermediate particle for it known as a gluon.
Update
Physicists lastly discovered proof for gluons in 1979, within the aftermath of electron-positron collisions at a German particle accelerator (SN: 4/21/79, p. 262). Gluons bind quarks inside protons by way of the robust pressure — probably the most highly effective pressure in nature. Recent investigations of gluons’ function contained in the proton recommend the particles’ power makes up about 36 % of the proton’s mass (SN: 12/22/18 & 1/5/19, p. 8). Future particle accelerators might gauge gluons’ contribution to the proton’s inside stress, which averages 1,000,000 trillion trillion instances the energy of Earth’s atmospheric stress (SN: 6/9/18, p. 10).