What constitutes protons? When I see pictures, I can't understand. Protons are made of quarks, but some say that they are made of 99% empty space. Also, in this illustration from Wikipedia, what's between the quarks?
Answer
The illustration doesn't show the underlined physical reality. A proton is made up of 3 quarks, namely $uud$, but it is also constituted, as jinawee pointed out, of virtual quarks and antiquarks who are constantly being created and annihilated via strong force which is mediated by gluons, described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD).
The grey sphere in Wikipedia's site, shows the region where quarks make the proton, in other terms, if the wave-function shows the probability of finding a particle in a region of space, then this sphere shows the probability where you can find the essential quarks making up a proton.
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