About
Particle physics explores the fundamental constituents of matter and energy. The Standard Model (developed 1960s-70s) describes 17 fundamental particles: 6 quarks, 6 leptons (including electrons and neutrinos), 4 force-carrying bosons (photon, gluons, W and Z bosons), and the Higgs boson. These particles and their interactions account for all observable physics except gravity.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC, CERN, Geneva) — a 27-km circular particle accelerator — discovered the Higgs boson in 2012, confirming the mechanism that gives particles mass. It collides protons at 99.999999% the speed of light, briefly recreating conditions from a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. The Standard Model is extraordinarily accurate — its predictions have been confirmed to within 1 part in 10 billion — yet physicists know it's incomplete because it doesn't include gravity.
# Top 10 particle physics facts
- 1Standard Model 17 particles
- 2Higgs boson discovered (2012)
- 3LHC at CERN
- 4antimatter
- 5neutrinos pass through Earth like it's not there
- 6quarks only exist in groups
- 7electron charge defines chemistry
- 8photons are massless
- 9Feynman diagrams
- 10dark matter is not in Standard Model
Fascinating Facts
- ◆Neutrinos are so weakly interacting that a light-year of lead would stop only half of them — they pass through Earth as if it doesn't exist
- ◆The Large Hadron Collider's proton beams carry the kinetic energy of a 400-ton train traveling at 150 km/h — in a beam thinner than a human hair
- ◆The Standard Model's predictions have been confirmed to within 1 part in 10 billion — the most precisely confirmed scientific theory in history
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