Most of your body's mass comes from pure energy, not from physical matter.

Protons and neutrons, collectively known as nucleons, are composed of three elementary particles called quarks. According to the Standard Model of particle physics, a proton consists of two 'up' quarks and one 'down' quark, while a neutron contains one 'up' quark and two 'down' quarks. These quarks are bound together by the strong nuclear force, which is mediated by massless particles called gluons.While the Higgs boson is often credited with giving particles mass, it only accounts for the intrinsic mass of the quarks themselves. A 2008 study published in the journal Science, led by Christian Hoelbling, used lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) to calculate nucleon masses. The research confirmed that the three valence quarks contribute only about 1% of a proton's total mass.The remaining 99% comes from the kinetic energy of quarks moving at relativistic speeds and the potential energy stored in the gluon fields binding them together. This is explained by Albert Einstein's equation E=mc², which demonstrates that energy and mass are interchangeable. Because quarks are confined in an incredibly small space and move at near-light speeds, their energy manifests as physical mass.This discovery reveals that the vast majority of mass in the visible universe is not solid 'stuff' in the traditional sense, but rather the result of dynamic energy interactions at the subatomic level. Without this binding energy, atoms would lack the mass needed to form stars, planets, and the biological life we observe today.