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Looking deep inside quarks: CMS test probes to 10⁻²⁰ meters and finds no inner structure

Phys · · 534 words · By CERN

The article discusses a CMS Collaboration study probing quarks at 10⁻²⁰ meters to test if they have internal structure. It references historical discoveries like Rutherford's nucleus identification and explains how high-energy collisions at the LHC are used to analyze particle interactions. Results show no evidence of quark composition beyond current limits.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://phys.org/news/2026-04-deep-quarks-cms-probes-meters.html

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0%
Propaganda Score
confidence: 95%
Low risk. This article shows minimal use of propaganda techniques.

fact_checkFact-Check Results

18 claims extracted and verified against multiple sources including cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia.

schedule Pending 8
verified Verified By Reference 5
check_circle Corroborated 3
help Insufficient Evidence 2
verified
“According to our current understanding of the universe, quarks are fundamental, point-like particles: basic building blocks that are not made up of smaller particles.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia explicitly states 'quarks are considered to be point-like entities, with no structure' in QCD. CERN's CMS experiment also confirms this as part of standard scientific understanding.
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web search NEUTRAL — Current quark masses for all six flavors in comparison, as balls of proportional volumes. Proton (gray) and electron (red) are shown in bottom left corner for scale.In QCD, quarks are considered to be…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark
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web search NEUTRAL — According to our current understanding of the Universe, quarks are fundamental, point-like particles: basic building blocks that are not made up of smaller particles.We do so using the world's largest…
https://home.cern/news/news/physics/cms-looks-deep-inside-qu…
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web search NEUTRAL — Those elements are composed of atoms, which are further classified based on the number of protons, neutrons and electrons that they contain. For a long time, these were assumed to be fundamental parti…
https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/what-are-quarks
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“A recent paper from the CMS Collaboration describes how it probed quarks to the scale of 10⁻²⁰ meters to test this premise.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple web sources (CMS experiment papers, CERN articles) independently confirm CMS probed quarks at 10^-20 meters. Wikipedia entries about CMS and LHC corroborate the experimental context.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment is one of two large general-purpose particle physics detectors built on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland and France. The goal of the CM…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Muon_Solenoid
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in pa…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008, in collabo…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider
+ 3 more evidence sources
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“At this scale, no evidence of constituent particles was identified.”
CORROBORATED
CMS experiment results from multiple web sources (CMS Excludes Quark Structures, Looking deep inside quarks) explicitly state no substructure was found at 10^-20 meters. Wikipedia's experiment definition supports methodological rigor.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Nazi Germany conducted medical experiments on prisoners in its concentration camps mainly between 1942 and 1945. There were 15,754 documented victims, of various nationalities and ages, although the t…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Serial Experiments Lain is a Japanese anime television series created and co-produced by Yasuyuki Ueda, written by Chiaki J. Konaka and directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura. Animated by Triangle Staff and fea…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Experiments_Lain
+ 3 more evidence sources
verified
“Rutherford discovered the nucleus by sending a beam of helium nuclei onto a gold-foil target.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia's 'Rutherford scattering experiments' entry and multiple web sources explicitly describe the gold-foil experiment with helium nuclei as Rutherford's method to discover the nucleus.
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web search NEUTRAL — The Rutherford scattering experiments were a landmark series of experiments by which scientists learned that every atom has a nucleus where all of its positive charge and most of its mass is concentra…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherford_scattering_experime…
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web search NEUTRAL — May 1, 2006 · In the now well-known experiment, alpha particles were observed to scatter backwards from a gold foil. Rutherford’s explanation, which he published in May 1911, was that the scattering w…
https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2006/05/rutherford-discovery-ato…
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web search NEUTRAL — Mar 26, 2026 · Rutherford model, description of the structure of atoms proposed (1911) by the New Zealand-born physicist Ernest Rutherford. The model described the atom as a tiny, dense, positively ch…
https://www.britannica.com/science/Rutherford-model
verified
“These nuclei scattered off the gold atoms of the foil at various angles, which Rutherford then measured.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia's 'Rutherford scattering experiments' entry and web sources like GeeksforGeeks and HyperPhysics directly describe measuring scattering angles of alpha particles against gold foil.
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web search NEUTRAL — Rutherford scattering or Coulomb scattering is the elastic scattering of charged particles by the Coulomb interaction.The scattering probability into small angles greatly exceeds the probability in to…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherford_scattering_experime…
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web search NEUTRAL — Rutherford Gold Foil Experiment. To determine how electrons are arranged in an atom, the Alpha (α) Particle Scattering Experiment was organized by Rutherford. Rapidly moving α-particles were directed …
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/chemistry/rutherfords-atomic-m…
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web search NEUTRAL — How did Rutherford figure out the structure of the atom without being able to see it? Simulate the famous experiment in which he disproved the Plum Pudding model of the atom by observing alpha particl…
https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/rutherford-scatteri…
verified
“By studying the distribution of the scattering angles, he was able to prove that atoms contained a point-like nucleus at the center.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia's experiment entry and web sources like 'Nucleus-nucleus scattering and the Rutherford experiment' confirm Rutherford's analysis of scattering angles validated the nucleus existence.
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web search NEUTRAL — Rutherford scattering experiments A replica of an apparatus used by Geiger and Marsden to measure alpha particle scattering in a 1913 experiment The Rutherford scattering experiments were a landmark s…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherford_scattering_experime…
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web search NEUTRAL — All of Rutherford's predictions were confirmed, and this paper can be considered the confirmation of the presence of a very small atomic nucleus at the centre of atoms as suggested by Rutherford.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03036758.2021.1…
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web search NEUTRAL — Rutherford Scattering
http://www.hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/rutsca.html
verified
“The nucleus was then shown to be made of protons and neutrons, which were themselves later found to consist of quarks.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia's 'Quark' entry and web sources explicitly state protons/neutrons are composed of quarks. This is a well-established particle physics fact.
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web search NEUTRAL — Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei.[1] All commonly observable matter is composed of up quark…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark
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web search NEUTRAL — It is now established that protons and neutrons (which constitute nuclei of ordinary matter) are themselves built out of more elementary units called quarks....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n12wvilucmY
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web search NEUTRAL — Through heavy ion collisions within powerful particle accelerators, we’ve managed to recreate those quark-gluon plasma conditions in the lab, with fascinating consequences. As a result, we now underst…
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/protons-and-neutrons…
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“LHC experiments including CMS are now continuing this quest, colliding particles at extremely high energies to probe the potential inner structure of quarks.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple web sources (CMS experiment descriptions, LHC context) confirm CMS experiments at LHC probe quark structure through high-energy collisions. Wikipedia entries support the LHC context.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment is one of two large general-purpose particle physics detectors built on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland and France.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Muon_Solenoid
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) is a general-purpose detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It has a broad physics programme ranging from studying the Standard Model (including the Higgs boson) …
https://home.cern/science/experiments/cms
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web search NEUTRAL — LHC experiments including CMS are now continuing this quest, colliding particles at extremely high energies to probe the potential inner structure of quarks.
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-deep-quarks-cms-probes-meters.…
help
“When two beams of protons collide within CMS, they break apart into their constituent quarks.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No web search results, Wikipedia entries, or cross-references confirm proton collisions in CMS producing quark jets. The claim lacks supporting evidence.
help
“These outgoing quarks become two jets—sprays of particles—that can be measured and used to reconstruct the scattering angle between the quarks.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No web search results, Wikipedia entries, or cross-references confirm quark scattering angles being reconstructed from jets. The claim lacks supporting evidence.
schedule
“The distribution of the scattering angle between the two jets can be compared to the distribution that would be expected if the quark was indeed a point-like particle.”
PENDING
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“The recent results from the CMS Collaboration, which were based on data from the second run of the LHC, showed no significant disagreement with the scattering distribution of a point-like quark.”
PENDING
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“This means that quarks are not likely to be larger than 10⁻²⁰ meters if they are composite structures.”
PENDING
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“This size estimate is derived from the constraints on the energy scale at which quark 'compositeness' reveals itself.”
PENDING
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“For the benchmark model of the recent CMS paper, which assumed that quarks were composite, the recent results set the most stringent limit to date at 37 TeV.”
PENDING
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“Data from the third run of the LHC and the upcoming High-Luminosity LHC could help to reduce the uncertainties on the measurement of the scattering angle, allowing us to identify even smaller structures and continue the search for the smallest building blocks of matter.”
PENDING
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“The paper is available on the arXiv preprint server.”
PENDING
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“Measurement of dijet angular distributions and search for beyond the standard model physics in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV, arXiv (2026). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2603.25458”
PENDING
info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.