“Physicists at Fermilab will soon commission a new experiment that will slam protons into various targets to reveal the mysterious subnuclear interactions in the sea of particles within the proton. The SeaQuest experiment, conceived by a team of nuclear and particle physicists, aims to provide a new understanding of nucleon-nucleon interaction. With results from this experiment, they could possibly replace the current model of nuclear force with a new fundamental theory.
Scientists hope the SeaQuest detector will begin taking data in a couple of weeks. Photo: Reidar Hahn
Physicists will examine the particles released from collisions of protons with liquid hydrogen and deuterium, as well as solid carbon and iron. New insights into the structure of the nucleon, which is an all-encompassing name for protons and neutrons, and the surrounding matter will answer questions about how the strong force interacts with the sea of quarks and gluons inside each nucleon. In particular, the scientists hope to learn more about the imbalance in the types of quarks discovered in a precursor experiment to SeaQuest: the decade-old NuSea experiment.”
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