Subatomic Background Information

After the Big Bang, there were numerous subatomic particles created from energy. Every particle had an anti-particle, a particle identical to it but with an opposite spin. To begin, the basic indivisible particle has been known as the quark, and its anti-particle, the anti-quark. The quark has been classified in six categories, up, down, charm, strange, top, bottom. They combine to form protons, neutrons, lambdas, and other particles called baryons. Quarks can also bind with anti-quarks (at a low temperature as so not to annihilate each other) to form pions and kaons, which belong to the group called meons. Another set of particles called leptons include particles such as the electrons and muons, and heavier charged particles called the tau and the neutrinos, which are almost mass-less and difficult to detect.

In order for these formations to occur, four natural forces including gravity, electromagnetic force, strong force, and weak force are needed. Gravity is the weakest of the four forces. However, what makes it unique is that gravity can act over great distances, said to be infinite, allowing it to bind stars and galaxies. The electromagnetic force helps to hold atoms together, and like gravity, its range is infinite. The weak and strong forces however have limited range. The weak force allows for certain forms of radioactivity such as the nuclear reactions of the sun. Lastly, the strong force, which is the strongest, has the ability to combine quarks and anti-quarks together and thus allowing them to form larger particles. In order to overall explain the particles and forces that control them, scientists have framed a theoretical Standard Model. This model incorporates the quarks and leptons and their interactions through the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces. Physicists explain forces to be transmitted between quarks and leptons by another category of particles called gauge bosons and vastly differ from other particles. The boson photon, which is a particle of light, carry the electromagnetic force, gluons carry the strong force, charge particles and neutral particles carry the weak force. It should be noted that gravity is not noted in this model for the very reason that there has been no bosons found that are responsible for carrying gravity. However, physicists predict that there is a theoretical particle called graviton, but there is no proof.