Vacuum’s Hidden heft: researchers link real quarks to empty space
Physicists at Brookhaven’s RHIC used high-energy proton collisions to energize virtual quark–antiquark pairs in the quantum vacuum, turning them into real, spin‑correlated strange quark–antiquark pairs. The pairs’ spins remained aligned as they formed lambda hyperons, and were traced by the STAR detector, providing a direct link between vacuum fluctuations and observable matter and offering clues about how protons acquire most of their mass.