What would happen if we were to split a proton or neutron?

We all know that nuclear fission produces a lot of energy. But as I understand it, subatomic particles are made up of smaller ones known as quarks. If neutrons are able to survive nuclear fission to continue the chain reaction, the force holding the quarks that make up those neutrons together must be much more powerful than the force holding atoms together. So, if we were to somehow split it, would even more energy be released?What would happen if we were to split a proton or neutron?
Well there was a time when people thought it could be that way and we could separate quarks and let them free, but it turns out from the latest theories that this seems to be just impossible, it's an oddity of their nature that they can only be coupled to other quarks, the farthest they are from each other the strongest the force between them, this process increases the potential energy of the system more and more until the point that if they do separate 2 new quarks are created at the ';breaking point'; with the energy stored. So in short, NO, protons and neutrons can't be split in order to release huge amounts of energy because the quarks avoid such situations, they allow us to ';split'; protons or neutrons only to produce new particles that weren't there before and perhaps small amounts of energy released (nothing impressive though)What would happen if we were to split a proton or neutron?
Protons and neutrons can not be split because the quarks are held so strongly that the amount of energy needed to pull them apart would create more quarks.
Well I don't know about that , but when a neutron disintegrates into a proton, it emits a W particle that absorbers a neutrino and gives off an electron.





This is one down quark in the neutron becoming an up quark.
We split protons all the time in particle accelerators. Indeed, the main function of the large hadron collider being built at CERN will be to smash protons into each other to break them apart. It is indeed believed that protons and neutrons are made of quarks, but quarks cannot exist independently. Instead, when we split a proton apart we get a set of particles that results from a rearrangement and conversion of the quarks. Of course, it takes an enormous amount of energy to split protons apart because they are stable particles, so there is no energy gain.





Neutrons by contrast are NOT stable. A free neutron will decay with a half life of 10.3 minutes - it is only stable when bound in a nucleus. The decay of the neutron is associated with the conversion of a down quark to an up quark by the weak nuclear interaction. This particle decay emits 1.29 MeV of energy - it is the energy source behind beta decay.
fission only occurs because the nuclus is unstable, i assume that quarks are stable so it'd be ke trying to do fission on nitrogen - doesnt work. However stable hydrogen can be combined in fusion (releases huge amount of energy - more than fission by a heap) so perhaps you could somehow combine quarks and release more energy - cause your right about quarks being held together with a stronger force, they must be.