P. King

The proton isn't a solid ball; it's more like a tight tangle of quarks and gluons. Gluons are the particles that carry the strong force — a kind of glue that holds quarks together. But this glue doesn't just connect; it presses. In the J/ψ-007 experiment at Jefferson Lab, a beam of photons was aimed at protons.

In the cosmic forge, stars do not melt iron but atomic nuclei. An ordinary furnace can do that, but sometimes the heat becomes so intense that the furnace blows itself apart. That seems to be exactly what happened with supernova SN 2024afyu. Its spectrum shows sulfur and silicon lines that leave no doubt: several solar masses of these elements were forged inside.