Research Suggests Proton Smaller Than Previously Believed

The journal Science is reporting about new research that suggests that the proton is about 4 per cent smaller than previously believed — which upsets physicists’ currently accepted understanding of how light and matter behave.

Aldo Antognini, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Zurich used a technique using laser spectroscopy to examine the charge radius of a hydrogen atom and came up with the new proton measurement.

While a small adjustment in the estimated the size of a tiny particle may not seem enormously significant to the average person, this new finding, which actually confirms research reported three years ago by Antognini’s team, has some physicists stumped as to what might be going on, and what this all means.

I’m not sure whether this observation has a bearing on LENR (readers here may have an opinion about that), but it’s an indication that settled science may not be entirely settled, and there could well be more going on within hydrogen reactions than is currently believed.

More information on the experiment can be found here.