I just read that the mass of a proton is one hundred times more than the sum of the masses of the quarks composing it. Now, I know that these numbers (the mass of the proton and the sum of the masses of the quarks) don't need to agree due to E=mc2, but why isn't the mass of the proton less than the sum of the quark masses? I mean, the quarks are obviously bound together to form a proton, and from QM I know that bound states require the total energies to be negative (assuming the potential energy at infinite separation is zero, but I guess that's fair if the strong force goes to 0 as the distance between two interacting particles, two quarks in this case, goes to infinity). In other words, the sum of the kinetic and potential energies of the quarks should be negative, causing the mass of a proton to be less than the masses of the quarks. This is similar to how the mass of an atomic nucleus is less than the sum of the masses of the protons and neutrons, or that the mass of an atom is less than the sum of the masses of the electrons, protons and neutrons. Why is this totally wrong, and how is it that a proton is as much as a hundred times heavier?
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