Fundamental particles and the Standard Model
Atoms are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, but protons and neutrons are themselves made of smaller particles called quarks: a proton has two up quarks and one down quark, and a neutron has one up quark and two down quarks. Electrons, as far as experiments can tell, are truly fundamental, with no smaller parts. The Standard Model is the theory that describes all known fundamental particles and three of the four fundamental forces. Its matter particles come in two families: six quarks (up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom) and six leptons, which include the electron and the nearly massless neutrinos. Forces are carried by particles called bosons: photons carry the electromagnetic force, gluons carry the strong force that binds quarks together, and W and Z bosons carry the weak force behind some kinds of radioactive decay. The Higgs boson, discovered at CERN's Large Hadron Collider in 2012, is connected to how particles get their mass. Each particle also has an antimatter partner with the opposite charge. The Standard Model does not include gravity and cannot explain dark matter, so physicists are still searching for a deeper theory.
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