The End Of The Line
The Standard Model of particle physics is by far the best scientific theory that we've come up with to date. It divides everything—and I mean everything—into 17 fundamental particles and four fundamental interactions.
The Standard Model finally gets us to the end of the rabbit hole. It describes "quarks," which make up protons and neutrons, and the "gluons" that hold them together. It also describes...just about everything else. Electrons? Standard Model explains it. Light? Standard Model explains it. That fancy particle you may have heard of called the Higgs Boson? You guessed it.
Factinate Video of the Day
History's most fascinating stories and darkest secrets, delivered to your inbox daily.
No Easy Answers
When I first started my search for the answer to "What is everything?", I hoped for an easy answer just like Democritus. It would be wonderful if everything could be boiled down to something as simple as an atom. But when we go down this rabbit hole, only one thing is clear: Things could not be more complicated.
I can tell you that atoms are made up of quarks, that form neutrons and protons, that form atoms, that form molecules...that eventually turn into that sandwich we started with. Maybe it'll help you at bar trivia sometime. But it turns out the universe is way more complex than we like to think. We've reached the bottom of the rabbit hole, and it's a maze down here.
If you want to understand more, you'd better bone up on your mathematics, because you're going to need it. Or you, like me, can be happy with the bar trivia version.
