ScienceNerdQuestions 🤓: Why are there so many subatomic particles other than protons, electrons, and neutrons?
Hey there! So you’re wondering about those mysterious subatomic particles beyond the basic protons, electrons, and neutrons? Let’s dive into this fascinating world of particles together!
Understanding the Diversity of Subatomic Particles
Well, the reason why there are so many different subatomic particles out there is because the universe is a complex place! These particles come in various types and have unique properties that contribute to the richness of our physical world. From bosons that carry forces to leptons that make up matter, each type of subatomic particle plays its specific role in the grand scheme of things.
Where can you find these subatomic particles?
These particles are not just some rare species hiding away in secret corners of the universe. In fact, subatomic particles are everywhere around us! They can be found in atoms, which are the building blocks of all matter. From the air we breathe to the ground we walk on, subatomic particles make up the fabric of our reality.
Getting to Know Some Subatomic Particles
Let’s take a look at a few examples of subatomic particles you mentioned:
- Bosons: These particles are responsible for carrying fundamental forces in nature, such as electromagnetic and weak forces.
- Leptons: Leptons are a type of subatomic particle that do not experience strong nuclear forces and are often associated with electrons.
- Quarks: Quarks are the building blocks of protons and neutrons, combining in different ways to form various types of particles.
Exploring the Unseen World
Our understanding of subatomic particles has come a long way, thanks to the remarkable progress in scientific research. By studying these tiny particles, scientists have unveiled the hidden secrets of the universe and expanded our knowledge of the fundamental building blocks of matter.
In Conclusion
So, next time you look up at the night sky or examine a simple object, remember that there is a vast and diverse world of subatomic particles that make up everything around us. The beauty of these particles lies in their complexity and the endless possibilities they offer for exploration and discovery.
Keep those questions coming, and let’s continue unraveling the mysteries of the universe together! 🌌🔬
We didn’t know either….science will never be “finished”.
There will always be: what if we made a more powerful microscope; what if we smashed the atoms harder…..
Scientists discover stuff, this answers some questions but also generates more to be researched
Some of those are categories rather than specific particles. For instance, “fermions” are particles that obey Fermi-Dirac statistics and that includes protons, neutrons and electrons. (The other definition is they’re particles with noninteger spin, like one half, one and a half, two and a half, and so on.) The other category covers stuff like photons and…most of the bosons, maybe all of them. Bosons obey Bose-Einstein statistics instead, and have integer spin. They also split particles into baryons and leptons, which are categories that meant “high mass” and “low mass”*. So while there are certainly a lot of particles, the terminology can make it seem even worse than it is. 🙂
Some of these particles are said to “mediate” a force, which means they appear when a field is acting. Photons appear when you interact with an electromagnetic field, W+, W- and Z^0 bosons are manifestations of the weak force, Higgs bosons go with the Higgs field (please don’t ask me anything about that one), you get gluons with the strong force, and we figure there should be a gravity particle, the graviton, but we have yet to confirm that one.
* *Those categories have had their definitions tweaked since, I believe, and now we have baryon = made of three quarks, meson = made of two quarks, and lepton = not made of quarks. And if you’re made of one quark, you’re called a quark. :)*
The way we learn about subatomic particles is kind of like taking two cars, smashing them together in a head on collision, and trying to figure out how the car was built by the path of the debris flying through the air.
As for the bits of debris, we can tell some things about charge and mass by how their paths get bent by electric or magnetic fields.
Then there’s a whole lot of simulations and statistics to see if the debris that our models predict would come out of said collisions actually does.
Physics doesn’t really do *why* – they just exist. Asking that is the same as asking why *anything* exists.
Their purpose? Some quarks are stable inside of protons and neutrons (each is made of 3 quarks), some carry forces (photons are how the electromagnetic force moves through space), and a lot of them don’t really exist out in nature except for super high energy levels. These ones almost immediately fall apart when we create them. So, it’s really only a fraction of the fundamental particles that are “important” in the functioning of our daily world.
Neutrinos are stable, commonly produced as byproducts of solar fusion, but have almost no mass so they move almost the speed of light, and no electromagnetic charge so they can fly straight through the electron cloud of an atom. About 100 trillion neutrinos shoot harmlessly through your body (and the whole Earth) every single second, just flying in a direction away from the Sun forever.