Is it possible for matter to be completely destroyed to nothingness

[TheAquascaper]

TL;DR

Is it possible for matter to be completely destroyed at the atomic level so that it no longer exists at all, and is it possible to keep cutting something in half forever?

I have 2 question about matter and atoms. I’m trying to learn here, excuse my ignorance :/

1. Is it possible for matter to be completely destroyed at the atomic level so that it no longer exists at all?
For instance, if you exposed ashes to extremely high temperatures, such as those found in the Sun, could they be permanently eradicated? Or does matter always continue to exist in some form, simply changing into something else and being recycled over time? Can stuff turns into “Nothingness”? (As in absense of stuff, not the non existence of time and space)

2. I was wondering whether it's really possible to keep cutting something in half forever. I know that, according to our current understanding of physics, there comes a point where you reach particles that can't be divided any further. However, I'm not sure I fully understand what that means. as far as I know particles aren't really there, they are just maths that describes our observations. And no one has seen a particle in the lab or a collider before, all are indirect observations that we then interpret as being a particle. So again, is it possible that it turned into “Nothingness”?

 

[Nugatory]

#1: if we expose ashes (or anything else, for that matter) to sufficiently high heat it will boil away into hot gas - but that’s still matter. Apply enough more energy and we’ll get an ionized plasma - but that’s still matter. To really destroy matter we would have to combine it with a matching amount of antimatter; the matter and antimatter would annihilate turning into electromagnetic radiation and eventually heat energy. But even then the total mass-energy is conserved; the total energy we end up with is given by $E=mc^2$, where $m$ is the combined mass of the matter and energy.

#2: It is not possible to divide forever. Start with a chunk of anything, divide it far enough and you get individual atoms. The atoms could then be separated into their constituent electrons, protons, and neutrons but that’s where it stops. The electrons are indivisible and the nucleons are made of quarks that cannot be separated.

 

[Ibix]

The answer to question 1 depends a bit in what you accept as "nothingness". The most complete destruction I can think of is to mix matter and an equal amount of anti-matter. All the mass will be converted to elctromagnetic radiation (gamma rays, mostly) which will rapidly vacate the area. But you can't just make stuff vanish, no.

Question 2, again, it depends what you mean. You can chop matterapart into atoms, and in principle you can separate atoms into protons, neutrons and electrons, but not really beyond that. Protons and neutrons are made up of quarks, but you can't separate those. We are not aware of any substructure to those, so as far as we know you can't cut them up. Again, you can mix in antimatter to convert the matter to radiation and let that disperse, but I wouldn't regard that as "nothingness".

 

[Roberto Pavani]

(high school answer): You can break matter down as far as a proton + electron + photon + neutrino plasma,
that's the simplest form.
You cannot destroy it further because protons and electrons are stable and their conserved quantum numbers (baryon number, lepton number, charge) prevent complete annihilation without antimatter.