In 2010, Phiala Shanahan was an undergraduate at the University of Adelaide, wrapping up a degree in computational physics, when she heard of an unexpected discovery in particle physics. The news had nothing to do with any of the rare, exotic particles that physicists were searching for at the time. Rather, the revelation revolved around the mundane, ubiquitous proton. That year, scientists had measured the proton’s radius and discovered that the particle was ever so slightly smaller than what previous experiments had reported. This new measurement threw into question what…
