The Illusion of Matter

In November 2018 the scientific world received a remarkable result that, unlike 3I/ATLAS, never reached public attention. I stumbled upon it accidentally while trying to understand how the Universe works, and it completely turned my worldview upside down. I want to share it with you.

Maybe you already know about it. Maybe it will be something new. Maybe it will turn your world upside down too, in a good way.

So, what exactly was discovered in 2018?

The proton as the fundamental building block of the visible Universe, the basic “brick” of matter gets only 1% of its mass from the actual weight of the three quarks inside it.

What about the remaining 99%?

According to the original research by Dr. Yi-Bo Yang, a postdoctoral researcher at Michigan State University, and the follow-up explanation by Andre Walker-Loud from Nuclear Science Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the remaining 99% comes from the strong interaction — the quantum force that binds quarks together.

In other words:

your body, your desk, your morning cup of coffee are not built from solid matter, but from energy bound inside quantum fields.

Let’s make this clearer

We normally imagine matter as:

molecules → atoms → nucleus → quarks

Quarks are the smallest known “material” component. But below quarks there is no matter at all — only quantum fields. The particles that connect these two worlds are called gluons. They are completely virtual: they pop in and out of existence, yet they weave the visible Universe every trillionth of a second.

Hard to believe, but this unbelievable speed is what allows us to perceive reality as stable. Let’s see how gluons do it.

Quantum Chromodynamics: the art hidden inside matter

To understand how gluons work, physicists use a theory called Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD).

According to QCD each quark carries a color charge:

• red
• green
• blue

(Not real colors — mathematical symbols for symmetry.)

When three quarks combine into a proton, their color charges add up to a neutral “white” state. It’s like three musicians playing different notes that form a perfect harmony. Gluons do something similar, but instead of notes, they constantly exchange “color information” between quarks, ensuring that the total remains neutral. This process is called the strong force — one of the four fundamental forces in physics.

This minimalistic image shows the three color charges of quarks — red, green, and blue — overlapping into a neutral “white” state. That balance is the reason protons (and we) exist.

And as you can see, the strong force is not like a rope holding quarks together. It is more like a continuous repainting process, a search for balance — a balance that has a cost.

And now the key point

If you take the masses of the three quarks inside a proton and simply add them together, you get only about 1% of the proton’s total mass.

The remaining 99% comes from the energy of the gluon field: the energy that maintains this constant balance.

According to Einstein’s famous equation:

E = mc² → energy appears as mass.

So:

That ocean creates the proton’s mass, not the quarks themselves.

This changes everything and literally means:

Have you ever thought about your weight not as kilograms or pounds, but as energy held in form?

If someone could “turn off” the strong force, all matter would unravel instantly. Atoms would dissolve, and everything would evaporate into light and heat.

Conclusion

Quantum physics quietly changes the way we see reality. It teaches us that what we call “matter” is mostly energy held in place by quantum fields. Even familiar objects — a stone, a book, your coffee cup — are not as solid as they appear.

And quantum physics does something even more unexpected:

it gently removes the old wall between matter and mind, between body and spirit — not in a poetic or philosophical way, but through a scientific fact described by mathematics.

The body is not a “thing” or a “container”. It is a process — woven every second by invisible fields of energy. We are not the result of creation. We are creation, continuously happening.

And if you still think the coffee cup on your desk is static, then in the next article I’ll show you why even that is an illusion your brain renders from a stream of photons.