Between atomic nucleus and electron

Atoms were once thought to be the fundamental particles of everything in the world, but it has since been discovered that atoms are composed of a nucleus and electrons and that there is a vast space between the nucleus and the electrons - how vast is it? Let's take the simplest atom in the universe, the hydrogen atom, as an example.

The nucleus of a hydrogen atom is a proton with a radius of about 0.833 x 10^-15 m. When a hydrogen atom is in its ground state, it is the smallest, with a radius of about 0.528 x 10^-10 m. In other words, the radius of a hydrogen atom in its ground state is about 63385 times that of its nucleus.

This means that if we scale up the radius of a hydrogen atom in the ground state to 500 meters, the radius of its nucleus would be about 0.79 centimeters, which is roughly the size of a common glass marble, after the same scale.

Of course, the hydrogen atom has an electron, and although scientists have not been able to accurately measure the radius of the electron, certainly, the radius of the electron is not more than 10^-18 meters in order of magnitude, which means that the radius of the electron is at most 0.01 mm after the same scale of magnification, still as small as a grain of dust.

In a sphere with a radius of 500 meters, there is only a small "glass marble" at its center and a "dust" orbiting around this "glass marble". "The degree of emptiness inside the atom can be imagined. Compared to the size of the nucleus and the electron, the space inside the atom is very large.

For this question, you may think of air at first, but after a little thought, you will find that this is impossible. Since air itself is a mixture of a large number of atoms, and most of them are also combined into gas molecules (e.g. oxygen, nitrogen), air can't exist inside an atom.

Since there is no air, is the space between the nucleus and the electron an absolute vacuum? The answer is, of course, no.

First of all, in the space between the nucleus and the electron, there may be some "passing" particles, such as photons. Modern physics believe that photons are the fundamental particles that transmit electromagnetic interactions, so if an atom exists in an electromagnetic field, then there will be photons in its internal space.

Neutrinos, for example, although the size and mass of this elementary particle are extremely small (it is generally believed that the diameter of a neutrino is less than 10^-20 meters and its mass can be less than 1 part per million of the mass of an electron), they are extremely numerous in the universe, the Sun produces on average about 1.7 x 10^38 neutrinos every second, so much so that on the surface of the Earth, the average flux of neutrinos can reach 600 trillion per square meter per second.

Neutrinos are so much smaller than atoms and so numerous that there is reason to believe that they are often found in the space between the nucleus and the electron, and since they do not participate in strong and electromagnetic interactions, they are in most cases just "passing through" the interior of the atom.

On the other hand, when some unstable atoms decay, their nuclei release different kinds of particles, such as alpha particles, electrons, positrons, neutrinos, antineutrinos, etc., which also exist for a short time in the vast space between the nucleus and the electron.

In addition to the "passing" particles, there is also a "Higgs field" in the space between the nucleus and the electron.

The concept of the "Higgs field" was first introduced by physicist Peter Higgs in the 1960s, who believed that there is a ubiquitous quantum field in the universe and that an elementary particle has mass when it interacts with this field.

This quantum field is called the "Higgs field", and according to Peter Higgs' theory, at very high energies, the "Higgs field" will excite an elementary particle called the "Higgs boson "According to Peter Higgs theory, very high energies, the Higgs field excites an elementary particle called the Higgs boson.

In 2013, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) discovered the existence of the Higgs boson for the first time, which means that the "Higgs field" is real. Since the Higgs field is "ubiquitous" in the universe, it must exist in the space inside the atom (otherwise, the nucleus and electron would not have mass).

It is worth mentioning that among the four fundamental forces in the universe, electromagnetic interaction, strong interaction, and weak interaction are transmitted by specific elementary particles, so it is reasonable speculation that gravity may also be transmitted by some elementary particles, which scientists call "gravitons The scientists call this possible elementary particle "graviton".

If "gravitons" really exist, then they would appear in the vast space between the nucleus and the electron, after all, the nucleus and the electron have mass, and matter with mass will produce gravitational force.