You do not know what stuff is, you who hold it in your hands. Atoms? Yes, stuff is made of atoms. And every atom is a nucleus orbited by electrons. Every nucleus is built of protons. Every proton is - but there you reach the end of the line. Inside the proton lies the deep, unsettling truth: Stuff is made of nothing, or almost nothing, held together by glue, lots of glue. Physicists first began to suspect this in 1973. Lately it has been proved by experiment.
CERN Photo
Frank Wilczek was a 21-year-old graduate student at Princeton University when hehelped develop this theory of the proton in 1973. He didn't really understand it himself at first; he was just following where the math led him. "We did the calculations, but we didn't have a simple intuitive understanding," Wilczek says. "The physical picture came later." That picture took a while even for physicists to absorb, because it really isn't simple. Even today, if you ask a physicist to describe a proton, you'll first get a cartoon version—the one that says a proton is made simply of three smaller particles called quarks. That description is not exactly false—it's just low resolution. It's true the way a picture of Times Square from 30,000 feet away is true. The close-up reality, the one Wilczek and his colleagues got a glimpse of long ago, is far more madding and strange.
