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mattbrowne's avatar

When will scientists find smaller building blocks than quarks and gluons?

Asked by mattbrowne (31732points) April 14th, 2009

For a long time people thought you can’t split atoms. The word ‘atom’ means being indivisible. The term turned out to be a bit premature. Electrons and a core were discovered and the core itself turned out to consist of protons and neutrons. Was this it? No, even protons and neutrons are not the smallest building blocks of matter. The quarks were named after the sound made by ducks and they turned out to be quite ‘colorful’. Is this really the end of it? Is there something more fundamental still? If yes, will it take another 100 years to find something even smaller. If the macro cosmos turns out to be a multiverse or something even bigger, how can we be sure it’s different for micro cosmos? Sure there’s Planck length and Planck time, but Newton was also proven wrong eventually.

If you like to know what the sticky stuff called gluons are, please let me know.

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