Earth-Shattering Discovery: Proton Size

schaefera

sciencemag.org/content/339/6118/417

How far-reaching are the implications of this? Presumably it could add support to or help disprove certain theories that predict the larger radius as compared to what was found. It's mind boggling, really. I'd have to say this is on par with the discovery of the quantum (ie photoelectric effect, double slit experiment).

Drakkith

I don't see the big deal with this. Could you elaborate?

schaefera

Well QED and QFT aren't my area of expertise, I just found it interesting this hadn't been posted yet.

What do those theories predict as the radius of the proton? It'd be a good test of their validity.

DiracPool

I can't decipher the mumbo-jumbo in the abstract. Did they say it was anything other than the 10^-15 m I learned in college?

DiracPool

Ok, correction, I saw the Femtometers thing. So its 1.082 femtometers, pretty close to what I learned in high school, where's the fire?

schaefera

Well it's actually the charge radius which is a full 5% below previously accepted values, that's the important thing here.

CWatters

Reasonable explanation here..

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...nergyHeadlines

As i understand it..

Knowing the size of the proton is important to our understanding of the laws of physics.

Two different ways of measuring it give different results.

That's allways interesting because it could be due to the way it's measured or some new physics?

Anyone care to comment if there are implication for LENR ?

ZapperZ

It is not. Hate to burst your bubble. It is an important refinement of our understanding, but not to the extent that you are imagining.

Zz.