Inside the most powerful particle colliders on Earth, protons slam together at nearly the speed of light, shredding matter into a short‑lived fireball of quarks and gluons. For years, physicists ...

During a deeply inelastic collision with a proton, a relativistic electron (highlighted in blue) can emit a high-energy photon (purple here) that penetrates interior of the proton, where it ‘sees’ ...

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 ...

Scientists have now mapped the forces acting inside a proton, showing in unprecedented detail how quarks—the tiny particles within—respond when hit by high-energy photons. The international team ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Physicists have begun to explore the proton as if it were a subatomic planet. Cutaway maps display newfound details of the particle’s ...

The big picture: Scientists have spent decades trying to unravel the mysteries of the proton – the tiny particle at the heart of every atom. Despite their minuscule size, protons are incredibly ...

Inside high-energy proton collisions, quarks and gluons briefly form a dense, boiling state before cooling into ordinary particles. Researchers expected this transition to change how disordered the ...