Welll like I said, there can only be an "explosion" if there is a suitable reaction of some sort, and none has been proposed. If there was such a reaction the universe would likely no longer exist as we know it, because it is FULL of "sparks".And if you ad a sparky energy like a proton beam, you might start a process where it or any other solid matter, turns again into a gas. And like you describe above; the process of an explosion might happen
I meant the ball in the bowl as an analogy:This I don't understand:
- 3 quarks are held together by a strong force
- if you want to remove one you need to apply force
- it (a quark I assume) will roll back down thx to a (gravitational) force
The ball in the bowl rolls down due to gravity.
The quarks settle down together forming a proton due to the strong force.
I think this is where your confusion is coming from. The binding energy is the energy you have to *add* from the outside to *undo* the binding. The strong force "holds the quark together" because if you try to pull out a quark, you will feel the force, and acting against it costs energy. When you're in the lowest energy state, no force is acting by definition (otherwise the state would change, wouldn't it?).-->> that doesn't mean there is an "inner strength"
You speak 3 times of forces holding the quarks together but there isn't an inner-strength? ...
The LHC will do the opposite - the collision energy allows the quarks inside the protons to move apart.
and thus release the energy of the binding, no?
Obviously all this is pretty simplified (the strong force is a weird beast, and then there's quantum mechanics), but I hope you get the idea.
Sure, it's around, but it's not the key force here. Rule of thumb: the weak force is important when leptons (e.g. electrons) are involved.and what about the weak force?
Energy of separated constituents = Energy of bound state (nucleus) + Binding energy. The binding energy is the work you had to *put in* to do the separating (against the binding forces), it's not "contained" in the bound state. It's also the energy *released* when you form the bound state."the mass of an atomic nucleus is less than the total mass of the protons and neutrons that make it up, but this is only true after the energy (work) of binding has been removed"