The hidden energy that makes up 99% of your body's mass

Science · Published 24 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: If you stripped away the atoms of your body, you might expect to find nothing. But the vast majority of your mass doesn't come from solid matter. It comes from the frantic, invisible energy of particles that have no mass at all.

Most of the mass in an atom is concentrated in its tiny nucleus, which occupies less than 0.01% of the atom's volume. While the Higgs Field provides the fundamental mass for particles, this accounts for less than 1% of an atom's total mass. The remaining 99% is generated by the strong force, the fundamental interaction that binds quarks together to form the protons and neutrons within the nucleus. This phenomenon is governed by quantum chromodynamics. Quarks possess a property called color charge—metaphorically similar to how red, blue, and green light combine to form white. Because color-charged particles cannot exist in isolation, they are forced into neutral combinations. This creates a state of confinement, where quarks are perpetually glued together by the exchange of massless particles called gluons.

According to the principle of mass-energy equivalence (E=mc²), mass is essentially a form of bound energy. Just as a compressed spring has potential energy that contributes to its weight, the energy required to confine quarks creates the mass we perceive. Specifically, the energy of the gluons confining the quarks inside the nucleus accounts for 99% of the mass of objects. Recent experiments at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility have even begun to pinpoint the physical location of this mass, finding it concentrated in a core at the center of the proton that is smaller than the proton's overall charge radius.

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