They were considered to be dots in space, lacking physical dimensions.
This suggested there was more to a nucleus than the dot-like protons and neutrons they had imagined.
They are the constituents of hadrons, which is the collective name for protons and other particles.
But quarks and gluons are anything but static building blocks.
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Yet it cannot help us to analytically calculate the protons properties.
This isnt some fault of our theorists or computers the equations themselves are simply not solvable.
For this, the accelerator is our most powerful tool.
What is the nature of the confinement of quarks within a hadron?
How does the mass of the proton arise from the almost massless quarks, 1,000 times lighter?
Thats exactly what the new collider will do.
The ion beam is the first of its kind in the world.
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