Particle Physics

This page is meant as a place to simplify and summarize current research into particle physics. Particle physics deals with the smallest of the small and is a field of research most connected with the ultimate description of reality. It is a field filled with fascinating possibilities and mind blowing realities that seem to defy our most strongly held assumptions about our world. For instance, we think of the world around us as solid, but particle pphysics tells us it is anything but. Most people know that atoms make up everything that we can see, smell, taste or feel, but many people just don't realize how close atoms are to not being there at all. Atoms are up to 99.9999999999999% empty space, and that means that everything that is made up of atoms is too. consider the earth and everything on it, if put under enough pressure, could easily be squeezed down to the size of a pea. this is the reason very small particles called neutrinos can pass straight through the Earth as if it were not there. Since many of these particles are created by our own sun, We have actually been able to image the sun, in neutrinos, from the the dark side of the earth. The neutrino image at the left was taken over a period of 503 days using Japan's Super Kamiokande detector, looking through the Earth.

Maybe even more fascinating than the emptiness of matter, is the energy that is contained within. Everyone has heard Einstein's famous equation of E=MC², but most underestimate just how much energy this represents. In the equation, C which of course represents the speed of light (300,000 m/s) is squared, making the conversion factor to go from mass to energy a cool 90 billion. For an idea of just what this means, consider that in a nuclear explosion, only about 1% of the actual fuel mass is converted to the energy of the explosion, while 99% remains massive, it's energy still locked within (1). And even more bizarre perhaps, is the fact that this equivalence can go either way. Namely, we can create matter out of pure energy. No doubt, it takes immense amounts of energy to create even the smallest amount of matter, but it is a common occurrence at any of the particle accelerators around the world, when the energy that is added to particles in the form of momentum, is converted to mass when they collide.

These things however only scratch the surface of what awaits anyone with the curiousity to dig deeper. Things such as antimatter (yes we make this every day), quarks, leptons and more leading to the variablility of time and space itself. The rest of this page will be devoted to a simple straightforward description of our current understanding of what is called the standard model of particle physics, and hopefully will serve as only the first step to further investigation.

"Human hope exists only to the extent each individual understands the reality of their world, their connection to it, and to us all"
Kozz

Note (1): Nuclear burning is different than Chemical Burning. When you burn a piece of wood in a fire (Chemical burning), no mass is actually lost. The energy you see released as heat and light is simply the result of breaking bonds within molecules which had been, in effect, storing the energy of the sun used to make them during growth. The weight of all the atoms captured in the gases and soot in a closed system after the burning, would equal the mass of the wood before burning, minus an almost immeasurable amount of mass which would be representative of the potential energy held within the molecular bonds that no longer exist.