Gluons carry a color charge so they actually attract each other and stick together, so you can theoretically strip away all the physical matter to leave just a knot of pure force behind which physicists call a glueball. People predicted these things back in the seventies but the math was brutally difficult to solve back then, then supercomputers finally calculated exactly what this particle should look like a couple of decades ago. A massive machine in Beijing then smashed electrons and positrons together for years to produce enough energy to catch one, and scientists dug through all the data to find a very specific energy spike that would be a marker of a glueball.

Once it was found, the next step was to prove that this thing was actually pure force. This was done by calculating the spin and quantum properties of the mystery particle to see how they compared to the models. The numbers matched perfectly and the signal was so strong that it couldn't be dismissed as a random fluke, but the team still faced a massive challenge to prove the particle contained absolutely no regular matter. Regular particles contain quarks that break apart into very recognizable pieces, but a glueball's mathematically forbidden from breaking down into those specific combinations. The researchers focused entirely on finding those forbidden fragments by analyzing a decade worth of data from the collider to look for normal matter signatures or unexpected reactions with light. And since they found absolutely nothing, that meant that the particle left no normal debris behind because they contained no physical matter.

We now know that pure force can ball up and exist as a physical entity on its own. You've probably heard about the Higgs particle giving things mass, but that only accounts for a tiny fraction of an atom's weight. The chaotic energy of these bizarre gluons is what generates the other 99% of the mass in the entire universe. The physicists pinned down a real glueball and fully validated the exact mechanism that gives mass to everything around us.

A nucleus is a balance of forces in tension. The particles are trying to fly apart at relativistic speeds, but they are held together by an even stronger force. This tension represents energy, and energy produces gravity -- which is a way of saying it has mass. The vast majority of all mass in the familiar world comes entirely from that tension.

So, somehow you can take all the protons and neutrons out of a nucleus, and still have that knot of forces held in tension? Acting on "nothing"? On spacetime? On itself? Non-locally on the original particles?

Or, can these knots be created without even having a nucleus to start from?

Insightful questions, jerkface.

*Me, downvoting before reading usernames for context*

It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together. Without the large hadron colliders we would have no knowledge of the force. When you learn to quiet your mind, you'll hear them speaking to you.

Good thing music is easy to come by.

I misremembered. Gluons don't bind the nuclear particles to each other, they bind the sub-nuclear quarks into nuclear particles.

It turns out that glueballs don't come from "taking the quarks out" of regular matter but by some kind of direct excitation of the colour charge field -- a thing I didn't even know was a thing.

I guess you don't technically need a nucleus, that's what they proved here. But remember that gluons are what bind quarks together. And quarks are what actually make up a Proton or Neutron.

So when will this result in anti-gravity tech or forcefields?

Yeah, IIRC the force between nucleons is actually mediated by virtual pions, which are themselves composite particles. The direct nuclear force gets stronger with distance instead of weaker, which obviously doesn't happen with whole atoms.

It turns out that glueballs don’t come from “taking the quarks out” of regular matter but by some kind of direct excitation of the colour charge field – a thing I didn’t even know was a thing.

Yep. It's like if photons (which are the fundamental particles of electromagnetism) had a magnetic or electric charge themselves. That was a known property, but it wasn't clear until now if it was enough to weave together into a larger particle like this.

That's because it's all just waves anyways.

This is incredibly exciting. This could form the beginning of a scientific understanding of paranormal phenomena. Of course I'm thinking wishfully and optimistically, but I can still hope.

So we might have found where all the missing mass in the universe could be hiding? In force balls?

Neat.

gravity is stored in the balls

If that would be the outcome it would be called normal behavior since it is not a brain fart anymore.