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The framework has been saying that we only ever see the top floor. This paper puts numbers on that claim and finds it is half right, and the wrong half was being emphasised. The clear space between sub-particles (QFT: nucleons) is 0.1602 fm, about a tenth of a piece. Resolving it requires 1,232 MeV, while 8 MeV scatters the arrangement and 2.224 MeV breaks the weakest real bond — an overkill of and . That gap figure assumes simple cubic packing; on close packing the gap is two to three times wider and the overkill falls to . The conclusion holds on every packing and the factor does not, so the claim made here is the weakest of them: at least fifty times the energy that ends the arrangement. Any ruler fine enough to see the gap destroys the thing being measured. That is a limit of the question, not of the equipment, and it does not improve with better machines. [identity — arithmetic on measured nuclear density] The floors below are a different matter entirely, and the finding is the opposite one. Stepping down by the framework's own packing ratio of 193.7981684379 per floor puts floor at fm and floor at fm. HERA already resolves to fm and the LHC to fm. Floor sits inside territory that has already been swept, on either standard convention for what a probe resolves. Floor survives on one convention and not the other, and is therefore held open. Size is what the framework used to keep them out of view, and size does not do that job. Whether anything is actually there is the step above this one, and it is named as an open target. [flag — a place to look] This record holds one paper on its own and is refreshed every couple of months. The complete deposit, 10.5281/zenodo.21788037, holds every paper with its code and data and is updated first; for the newest version of this paper, go there.
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James Norman Ibbotson (2026) studied this question.
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