1
The Search for New Physics Have you ever wondered how often you could split a grain of sand into smaller pieces? Have you asked yourself what the sky is made of? Perhaps you have dreamed of traveling backwards in time? Matter 12 building blocks are the fundamental constituents of matter. Our everyday world is made of just three of these building blocks: the up quark, the down quark and the electron. This set of particles is all that's needed to make protons and neutrons and to form atoms and molecules. The electron neutrino, observed in the decay of other particles, completes the first set of four building blocks Like all quarks, the sixth quark, named top, is much smaller than a proton (in fact, no one knows how small quarks are). The top is as heavy as a gold atom… Each particle has a corresponding antiparticle, which looks and behaves in almost the same way. Antiparticles, though, have the opposite properties of their corresponding particles. An antiproton, for example, has a negative electric charge while a proton is positively charged. From a drop of water going smaller… …and smaller… …and smaller… Particles are created in high energy collisions... Forces Particles transmit forces among each other by exchanging force-carrying particles called bosons. The gluon mediates the strong force; it “glues” quarks together. The photon carries the electromagnetic force; it also transmits light. The W and Z bosons represent the weak force; they introduce different types of decays. The Standard Model ...in accelerators like at Fermilab in Chicago... This particle detector is as big as an apartment house... One essential ingredient of the Standard Model, however, still eludes experimental verification: the Higgs particle. It interacts with other particles to give them mass. The Higgs particle gives rise to a new force carrier, called the Higgs boson, which has not been observed. Unsolved Mysteries Why do we observe matter and almost no antimatter if we believe there is a symmetry between the two in the universe? Why can't the Standard Model predict a particle's mass? Are quarks and leptons actually fundamental, or made up of even more fundamental particles? How does gravity fit into all of this? Superstring Theory may hold the key to constructing a theory of quantum gravity, the essential step in linking gravity to the other fundamental forces. Let’s see what future experiments will reveal…
