Wanna learn about particle physics ?
You need to just break the things. You can start by manually breaking the things, but eventually you will need accelerators ( for collision of particles at high speed so that you can find out what’s inside or what E=mc^2 leads to)
Boom!!
It’s beautiful that how our thinking about what are made up of has evolved over years
From thinking about fire , earth , air , water and soil now we have come a long way to Higgs Boson
Let’s take a look upon the journey
So it all basically started with Dalton – his atomic theory. He said that everything is made up of small indivisible particles called ‘Atoms’.
Dalton’s Postulates
Then in 19 th century Bang!Electron was discovered. Atom was no longer indivisible.
Along the timeline, proton( By Ernst Rutherford ) and neutron ( By Chadwick) were also discovered.
But wait , protons and neutrons are also not fundamental.They can be broken down to “quarks”.
These are elementary particles.
When you answer what forms the universe , you might refer to this Periodic table
But there is something more fundamental-
There are 6 flavours of quarks –
Up , down , charm , strange , top and bottom ( up and down being the lightest). Quarks occupy the top two rows
Heavier the quark , more is the decay probability so up and down quarks are the most found in the universe. The particles made by combination of quarks are called hadrons example – protons , neutrons as shown-
each up quark has a charge of + 2/3 and each down quark has a charge of -1/3
Proton has two up and one down quark so total charge is 2*(+2/3e)+1*(-1/3e)=+1e
Quite Similarly, a neutron has two down quarks and 1 up quark making up a total charge of
2*(-1/3e)+ 1*(2/3e)= 0
Caution : Now you are going to see some really freaky names, but yeah concept is fairly simple
Then we have leptons. Again as you might expect electron being lightest muon and tau be heavier successively and electron neutrino being the lightest and muon and tau neutrinos being relatively heavier ones
Each of these 12 particles have an anti-particle that has same properties as the corresponding particles but opposite charge.
But wait , how do the particles interact with each other – via forces you might answer, well yeah but how do they experience those forces ?
We have four fundamental forces-
1.Strong force
2.Electromagnetic force
3.Weak force
And 4. Gravitational force
Well yeah , get excited because the vertical table you see corresponds to the force carrying particles
Photons – carries of electromagnetic force ( light )
W and Z bosons-(collectively called Guage bosons) – carries of weak force (The sun🌞 you see every morning , its existence is majorly because of W bosons , so yeah they are important).
Gluons- They basically form connection between the quarks
Graviton- Hypothesized to be responsible for Gravitational force but hasn’t been detected yet.
(Strength of gravitational force is about 10^40 times smaller than strong force ).
Higgs Boson – You might have known it in the form of ‘God Particle’ ( which is absolutely not true..but yeah media…)So this is basically a kind of proof of a field that actually gives mass to these elementary particles.
There are a total of 61 fundamental particles ( as for now )
With these particles in your hand , you have the power to create your own universe- well you might think so but wait;
Remember dark matter , the matter that makes up roughly 28 percent of the whole universe , it’s still a mystery.
Don’t loose heart reader , everything that you look around tells a story , just keep on gaining enough knowledge to comprehend one🌠
