It's not. Just like how if you push two identically charged plates towards eachother the potential energy in that system is not made of photons.
Sure you can describe the electric field in that case by a viewpoint where you sum virtual photons together to get said electric field. Whereas a non virtual photon is alltogether a different thing. You can actually describe a normal non virtual photon as a sum of virtual photons.
Point is that virtual particles are just a mathematical tool.
Actual real gluons do exist and they're analogous to the actual photon.
In case of electromagnetism the actual stuff is the electric field. With proton (so in quantum chromodynamics) it's the gluon field. It's called that because every particle has a field and every field a particle. It would be kinda like calling electric field a photon field. Same difference.
It's a bit like the "energy" in an electric capacitor. It's a property of the system's state that is related to the interactions between the particles.
In a charged capacitor, there's a lot of electrons on one side, but very few of them on the other. When you close the capacitor, suddenly you get a lot of energy out of it.
Looks like it, quarks are bound together by gluons so as you go up the energy scale and 'see' more quarks the gluon energies dominate. In fact about 99% of the Proton's mass is in the form of this binding energy.
I didn't say the binding energy is gluons, but I suppose it's more accurate to say that the binding energy of the strong nuclear force is mediated by gluons.
It's not. Just like how if you push two identically charged plates towards eachother the potential energy in that system is not made of photons.
Sure you can describe the electric field in that case by a viewpoint where you sum virtual photons together to get said electric field. Whereas a non virtual photon is alltogether a different thing. You can actually describe a normal non virtual photon as a sum of virtual photons.
Point is that virtual particles are just a mathematical tool.
Actual real gluons do exist and they're analogous to the actual photon.
In case of electromagnetism the actual stuff is the electric field. With proton (so in quantum chromodynamics) it's the gluon field. It's called that because every particle has a field and every field a particle. It would be kinda like calling electric field a photon field. Same difference.
It's not made of anything, it's just energy.
To think of a proton as containing tons of gluons would be a mistake.
Additionally gluons are expected to be massless, they basically come into existence as needed.
It's a bit like the "energy" in an electric capacitor. It's a property of the system's state that is related to the interactions between the particles.
In a charged capacitor, there's a lot of electrons on one side, but very few of them on the other. When you close the capacitor, suddenly you get a lot of energy out of it.
Looks like it, quarks are bound together by gluons so as you go up the energy scale and 'see' more quarks the gluon energies dominate. In fact about 99% of the Proton's mass is in the form of this binding energy.
Binding energy is not gluons. Gluons are massless, binding energy is just energy, it's not a particle.
I didn't say the binding energy is gluons, but I suppose it's more accurate to say that the binding energy of the strong nuclear force is mediated by gluons.
No such thing as ‘just energy’, every force needs a force carrier particle and gluons are that for the strong force. Photons are massless, too.
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