• InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    We think the way the 3 quarks entangle to make a neutron could be asymmetric, such that it’s not a perfect, canceled out neutral blob.

    Up quarks have +2/3 of a charge, down quarks have - 1/3.

    Depending on how they all exist in the nucleus (quarks can’t be free, they basically have to be bound to each other, it’s why the strong force is so strong), they could overlap perfectly, or they could be next to each other like in a triangle, and we could notice that a neutron actually has a polarity where one side is slightly (impossibly slightly) more positive/negative than the other.

    Then we have polarized neutrons, and your whole life is a lie.

    But we’ve looked, and basically there’s no sign as far as we can tell, which is unfortunate, it means quarks are truly lost in the ‘quark-gluon soup’ of a hadron.