FEATURE ARTICLE
The Anatomy of a Neutron
The “neutral” part of the atom is far more than buffer or ballast—when viewed at the correct scale
Timothy Paul Smith
Neutrons have the reputation of being dead weight, mere ballast in the atom. But it turns out that we have not been looking at a high enough magnification to see what’s really going on. Recent studies with particle accelerators have shown that the neutron has its own life, with a surface that boils with news particles and a heart alive with quarks and gluons. In fact, at tiny distances, neutrons may not even be entirely neutral.
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