The fundamental subatomic particles that have no (currently known) substructure. These include fermions (quarks, leptons, antiquarks, and antileptons) and bosons (gauge bosons and the Higgs boson). A particle containing two or more elementary particles is a composite particle.
Questions tagged [elementary-particles]
487 questions
5
votes
2 answers
Why should I believe that "elementary" particles are indeed elementary?
Atoms were once thought to be indivisible (i.e. have no substructure) until it was discovered that they are made of protons and neutrons. Protons and neutrons in turn are made of quarks, and that's where current knowledge ends.
I had always assumed…
user55611
1
vote
2 answers
The composition of electrons, quarks and gluons: something or nothing?
It is told that electrons, quarks and gluons are indivisible thus have no compositions like any particles. So, are they actually composed of nothing or space?
SnoopyKid
- 342
1
vote
2 answers
How many elementary particles are there?
I was reading QED by Feynman (a dated book) and he seemed to be suggesting we have discovered hundreds of particles. But I thought there were only the ones we saw in the standard model (ie leptons, quarks, gauge bosons, higgs boson)? Why aren't all…
Stan Shunpike
- 4,081
0
votes
1 answer
(Solved) Why does this Kaon interaction need the intermediate up quarks?
In the answers to a set of practice questions my lecturer shows that we need these up and antiup quarks in the middle, but I don't quite understand why we can't go straight from the down to strange etc.
0
votes
2 answers
Elementary particles and Bosons
Which of the elementary particles in particular are called ‘Bosons’? It is a trivial knowledge that electrons are Fermions obeying Fermi-Dirac statistics. Fermions follow Pauli Exclusion Principle as per which no two elementary particle in atom…
0
votes
2 answers
How can particle decay all work out in the universe?
Unfortunately, I'm ignorant on this topic, and my main source is:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_decay
If particles only decay into less massive particles, what keeps all the different massive particles around? What keeps the universe from…
Fisk42
- 19
0
votes
2 answers
Since nucleons are not elementary particles more, how we call nucleons and electrons together now?
In the time before the discovery of quarks the nucleon particle proton and neutron together with electrons were called elementary particles.
It's a little bit boring to have only the possibility to describe protons, neutrons and electrons together…
HolgerFiedler
- 10,334
0
votes
1 answer
What are the building blocks of objects?
We are always told everything is made of atoms, but that seems to me to be a to vague response. The atom is the smallest construction block for all things; if this is true, what are all the other blocks?
There are molecules, there are bonds, and…
