• Question: What is our current understanding in particles???

    Asked by anon-217592 to Savannah on 10 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Savannah Clawson

      Savannah Clawson answered on 10 Jun 2019:


      In physics, we have what we call the “Standard Model” of particle physics. The Standard Model describes all of the fundamental particles in the Universe and the interactions that they have with each other. This includes the particles that make up the atoms around us such as electrons, and the quarks that make up protons and neutrons, but it also includes strange particles that don’t exist around us naturally – we have to create them using a lot of energy! It is basically a recipe for the Universe and so far, it has passed every test that we have thrown at it. There’s just one problem though – we know it can’t be the final story. The particles in the Standard Model only make up less than 5% of our Universe. We know that there must be other stuff there because of the way that galaxies behave and the way that the Universe is expanding – it just can’t be explained with what we already know. No matter what we try though, we haven’t found out where the Standard Model is going wrong so scientists are working really hard to test every single bit of it until we find where it falls down. That’s what I do every day in my job 🙂

      If you want to find out more about the Standard Model, check out this link: https://home.cern/science/physics/standard-model

Comments