Blip Challenge

By blipchal

Lithium

Lithium-6 to be precise, you can see the three neutrons, and three protons. The electrons aren't visible in this shot - they would probably be about a mile away.
The nucleons are held together by the strong force, because otherwise the 3 positively charged protons would fly apart - like charges repel dontcha-know.

Neutrons are just a tiny bit heavier/bigger that protons, and I think we captured the essence of this in this reconstruction. If you look closely you might see a fleeting gluon - although it could just be a trick of the light.
We did think about bashing them into their constituent quarks, but decided a hot drink might be better.

(It started off as an alpha particle - but then we added to it - neutron capture you know).

You can't see frozen fingers or the soggy gloves though.

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