  We advocate the idea that Unruh's quantum radiation, whose theoretical
discovery was originally motivated by the physics of black holes, may have
important implications on the structure and dynamics of elementary particles.
To that end, we analyze the Unruh radiation effect experienced by an
accelerated particle in atomic and nuclear systems. For atomic systems, the
effect is negligible as compared to the characteristic energy of the system. On
the other hand, it is found that a quark inside a nucleon may experience Unruh
radiation whose energy is of the same order of magnitude as the quark's own
mass.
