Mass and Range of Gluons

This page seems to be saying that gluons are massive under current conditions (only inside nuleons? or everywhere including (virtual?) gluon pairs in vacuum?). But I heard many times "gluons are massless". So, what gives? Gluons are massive or massless? or it depends on other factors (if so, what are these conditions/factors and why?)? Is this page wrong or correct?
- Anonymous
the universe with privileged? 3+1 spacetime?

Hi Anything, 

Long time no hear,

I hesitate to use the B-word but I will go along with the Wiki-article that implies a different interpretation of the gluon mass and range: .   The relevant paragraph states:

"Since gluons themselves carry color charge, they participate in strong interactions. These gluon-gluon interactions constrain color fields to string-like objects called "flux tubes", which exert constant force when stretched. Due to this force, are within called . This effectively limits the range of the strong interaction to 10⁻¹⁵ meters, roughly the size of an . Beyond a certain distance, the energy of the flux tube binding two quarks increases linearly. At a large enough distance, it becomes energetically more favorable to pull a quark-antiquark pair out of the vacuum rather than increase the length of the flux tube".

 

LeeH

(published on 05/09/2014)