Going deeper into the Atom

Atom1

Hi, a question I have been asking myself is what where to happen if we where to look deeper into the atom? Is there a point in where there is really nothing? As far as I know it only goes down to quarks. Is the quark the end of it or is there more?

Simon Bridge

That is a very good question which is currently being studied.
One idea is that there is no such thing as "nothing" - on the planc scales, what we usually think of as a vaccuum is sort-of foamy. On very small scales, though, our everyday ideas about what counts as "something" and "real" are difficult to apply.

I don't think anyone believes that the subdivision of particles goes on forever though.

ZapperZ

This chart might be useful to you, even if it is slightly out-of-date with the most recent result from the Higgs.

http://www.cpepweb.org/cpep_sm_large.html

This is the elementary particles that we currently know of. All the bosons and leptons listed are considered as elementary particles within the Standard Model. It means that these are the basic building blocks of all matter that we know of. So your atoms, your nucleus, your mesons, etc.. etc. are all built using one or more of these, and held together by the "interactions" that are also listed in the chart.

Zz.

liubare

Really great website there, Zapper.