shrinking protons

a paper in Nature July 8th (see www.sciencenews.org ) indicates protons are smaller than previously thought – by some 4 per cent. This doesn’t sound a big deal, you might think, but scientists say this could have ‘enormous implications’ and ‘something is ‘drastically wrong’. It could be there is something amiss with quantum electro-dynamics, the theory of how light and matter interact by incorporating Einstein’s special relativity into quantum mechanics (see also pre-publication news report on In the News last week).