Hydrogen dissociation measurement puts theory at odds with experiment

The most precise experimental value for the dissociation energy of molecular hydrogen has been measured by an international team led by Wim Ubachs at VU Amsterdam and Frédéric Merkt at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). The measurement delivers an order of magnitude improvement over the previous best and is a significant deviation from the most recent theoretical calculations. Resolving this discrepancy could lead to improvements in molecular quantum theory and could result in a better measured value for the proton radius.