Like, why is, say, 1 cm³ of gold heavier than 1 cm³, the same amount, of copper?

    • red_tomato@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Also, an atom is mostly empty space. So there’s lots of room for an atom to increase its number protons/neutrons without increasing its size.

      • Hishiryo@scribe.disroot.org
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        8 days ago

        Well… Empty empty, I don’t think so; think about the whole issue of vacuum energy and the consequent virtual particle-antiparticle pairs, or the mere fact of the existence of quantum fields that permeate everything — like the field responsible for mass itself, the Higgs field.

        That’s a simplification; a useful one, but a simplification nonetheless.