Search for New Particles: How Far Can We Go?

[bugatti79]

Folks,

There's hype lately regarding the Higgs boson in which some results from CERN are to be revealed next tuesday detailing its existence or not. Then I heard about a new type of force field called technicolour which would indicate a new type of particle.

The question I have is, how do we know that there are not a million types of different particles.

Ie, the harder you smash atoms, newer particles are discovered (thats my interpretation)

They seem to be discovering new particles all the time...where does it end?

thanks

 

[PatrickPowers]

Folks,

There's hype lately regarding the Higgs boson in which some results from CERN are to be revealed next tuesday detailing its existence or not. Then I heard about a new type of force field called technicolour which would indicate a new type of particle.

The question I have is, how do we know that there are not a million types of different particles.

Ie, the harder you smash atoms, newer particles are discovered (thats my interpretation)

They seem to be discovering new particles all the time...where does it end?

thanks

That was true a few decades ago, but particle discovery has slowed down a lot. Just about all the particles predicted by QCD (quark theory) have been discovered, with the Higgs being the big holdout. Some think that there are no more particles, some expect that that very high energy particles called supersymmetric partners exist.