The ancient Greeks speculated that it could be air, fire, or water. A century ago, physicists were convinced it was an atom. Today, we believe that the deepest layers of reality are occupied by a diverse cast of elementary particles, all governed by quantum theory. Everything you see and experience is born. It’s a world full of wonders, but the strangeness can be confusing. Or at least it often feels that way.
Below is a concise and clear guide to the known particles and forces, and the quantum laws and phenomena that give quantum physics its reputation, from electrons, quarks and neutrinos to photons and the Higgs boson. Weirdnesses such as wave-particle duality, entanglement, and the uncertainty principle. We also discover hypothetical particles that can make sense of cosmological puzzles such as dark matter and dark energy, as well as strange things that may lurk beneath the quantum realm. Finally, I will have many of your questions answered. In particular, what is the theory of everything?
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We start with what we know very little for sure. All visible matter is made up of atoms, with protons and neutrons at the center of each atom. But even these are not elementary particles, as detailed in the current “Standard Model” of particle physics. So we start with what matter is actually made of.
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