INTRODUCTION

We all know that most atoms are made up of electrons, proton and neutrons
(except Hydrogen). Now, the protons and neutrons are not the smallest particles
that every atom is actually made up of. The neutrons and protons themselves are
made of smaller particles which are the smallest known building blocks of our
universe. The study of these extremely tiny particles is called particle physics.

Now, these tiny particles, also called as elementary particles; are classified into 3
major families - quarks, leptons and bosons. The quarks and leptons are collectively
called the fermions, which means mass carriers and the bosons are the force
carriers

Each elementary particle has 3 basic properties - mass, spin and charge.
i) The mass of these particles is mentioned in terms of energy, from Einstein's
mass - energy equivalence: E = mc^2.
ii) The spin here does not essentially refer to the spinning of a ball, but it is a
concept which is used to explain how the elementary particles move around
inside the ‘subatomic particles’. The fermions typically have half integer spins
whereas the bosons have integer spins such as 0, 1 or 2.

QUARKS
There are 3 generations of Quarks - Up and Down, Strange and Charm, Top and
Bottom. In total, we have 6 kinds of quarks which we'll refer to as flavors.
Generation 1 - Up and Down;
Generation 2 - Charm and Strange;
Generation 3 - Top and Bottom;
Charge of up, charm and top: +2/3
Charge of down, strange and bottom: -1/3 continuous in all generations.
There is not much of a difference among the generations, just that the mass of the
quarks increases as the generation increases.
Now, a proton is made up of two up quarks and one down quark, so it’s total charge
is (+1), and a neutron is made up of two down quarks and one up quark, so it’s total
charge is 0. Now, the protons and neutrons are both combinations of three quarks
and are called baryons.

LEPTONS
The Leptons also have three generations like the quarks:
Generation 1) electron and neutrino,
Generation 2) muon and muon neutrino,
Generation 3) tau and tau neutrino.
The electron, muon and tau have a charge of -1 while the neutrino, muon neutrino
and tau neutrino have a charge of 0.
Thus, we can classify the leptons into two types - charged leptons (electron family)
and neutral leptons (neutrino family). Only electrons are the only individual leptons
involved in the formation of atoms. In nature, quarks exist as baryons (they are
found in baryons or mesons) and they are never found individually, but the leptons
are found individually. As we know, electrons are much smaller in comparison to the
neutrons and protons and the electrons have a mass of 9.1 * 10^-31 kg or 0.5 MeV.
However, the neutrinos are thousand times smaller than an electron itself and have
a mass of nearly 0 MeV. That is why the neutrinos rarely interact with other matter
and they are undetectable even by modern methods.

COLOR CHARGE PROPERTY

Within a baryon, we have two quarks of the same flavor - how are they
distinguished? They are distinguished by a special property called color charge.
Each quark in a baryon has a unique color - red, green or blue (These colors are not
actually seen because these elementary particles are extremely tiny to be seen
(10^-18 m)). The 3 quarks keep exchanging colors and interact. The quarks within a
baryon interact and exchange their colors with the help of a boson called the gluon.
The gluons act as messengers or carriers between the quarks, and they help in the
exchange of color charges between the quarks as well as facilitate the interaction of
the quarks. Since the gluons are massless, they help in exchange of color charge at
the speed of light. As a result, the same color charge cannot be present in 2
different quarks of the same proton. Therefore, the 3 quarks in a baryon will always
have different color charges and these color charges are exchanged among
themselves with the help of gluons which carry the color charge. On combining the
color charges of the quarks, we find that the baryon is colorless. This same color
charge property is also used to determine how the quarks are bonded together in
the baryons.

STRONG NUCLEAR FORCE

You might have heard about the term ‘strong nuclear force’ - this is simply the
exchange of color charge and interaction between quarks with the help of gluons;
creating the strongest force in the universe. Although they are the strongest force,
their range extends for only a few femtometers, about 2.5 femtometers to be
precise.
An application of the strong nuclear force is the way the protons are bonded
together in the nucleus - although the like charges of protons should repel each
other. Although the strong nuclear force extends for only a few femtometers, since
the size of a proton is less than one femtometer, the strong nuclear force leaks out
of the proton and causes strong bonding between adjacent protons in the nucleus.
The strong nuclear force overcomes the electrostatic force of repulsion, so the
protons stick together instead of repelling each other.

MESON FORMATION
if we try to kick out a quark from a baryon particle, it requires a lot of energy.
Gluons are constantly exchanged between quarks and they form a tube-like
structure. This tube-like structure acts like a spring or a rubber band - the more the
force applied to pull out the quark - the stronger does the pull by the tube-like
structure becomes. However, if we provide enough energy to pull out the quark
from the baryon, it creates a quark and an antiquark pair called a meson. The
energy provided to pull out the quark from the baryon particle gets converted into
mass (by Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence) of the antiquark and thus the quark -
antiquark pair is created. However, mesons decay pretty quickly. The exchange of
mesons between the same charged protons and neutrons is also responsible for
them to stick together in the nucleus along with the strong nuclear force.

ELECTROMAGNETIC FORCE
We know that electrons orbit the nucleus in clouds, there exist several energy levels
inside them. Electrons are charged particles, so they have an electric field.
Similarly, protons also being a charged particle have an electric field. We have
learnt that inside baryons, the quarks constantly exchange gluons and stick
together by forming a strong force. Similarly, when charged particles like protons
and electrons come close to each other, they share virtual photons and create an
electromagnetic force between them. They're virtual because the energy of these
photons is not detectable. The exchange of virtual photons is the reason behind the
repulsion of like charges and attraction of unlike charges.

PHOTONS
Unlike virtual photons, real photons also exist, which is basically the fundamental
unit of light - their energy is detectable and they are released when an electron
jumps to a lower energy state or they are absorbed when an electron gets excited.
They have no mass, no charge and travel at the speed of light.

So far we've learnt about quarks, their energy carriers - gluons, leptons and, their
energy carriers - photons.
The strong force is responsible for binding of quarks in a photon and also for binding
of several protons and neutrons in the nucleus.
Photons act as the force carriers between the nucleus and electrons, creating the
electromagnetic force which links the electron to the nucleus and thus completes
the atom.
The electromagnetic force is definitely strong but it can never overcome the strong
nuclear force. The strong nuclear force has to be stronger than the electrostatic
force of repulsion between two protons in the nucleus. If it were weaker than the
electromagnetic force, no atom with more than one proton in the nucleus would be
able to form.

Now, we have the remaining two bosons - Z boson and W boson. These make up the
weak force.

W- and W+ BOSONS
In nature, everything seeks stability, including atoms. An unstable atom is the one
where either number of protons > number of neutrons or number of neutrons >
number of protons. To become stable, the neutron converts into a proton and tries
balancing the number of protons and neutrons.

How can the neutron convert into a proton? We know that the neutron is made of
two down quarks and one up quark, the proton is a combination of two up quarks
and one down quark. Thus, for a neutron to convert into a proton, one down quark
of a neutron must change into an up quark. A down quark has (-1/3) charge which
needs to be converted into (+2/3) charge so that it becomes an up quark, for this it
needs to gain (+1) charge. To do this, the down quark (-1/3) emits a W - boson and
converts into an up quark (+2/3). The W - boson has a charge of -1. In the conversion
process, the charge is thus conserved. The W - boson is unstable on its own, so it
quickly decays into an electron and an antineutrino pair. Electrons have -1 charge
and the anti-neutrino has 0 charge. This is called a beta minus decay.

Similarly, when a proton converts into a neutron, one up quark (+2/3) must convert
into a down quark (-1/3). the up quark gains (-1) charge by emitting a W + boson.
The W+ boson is also unstable and quickly decays into a positron (anti-electron) and
a neutron, which is called beta plus decay.

Without this process (beta plus decay), hydrogen atoms cannot fuse to form helium
atoms and the process of nuclear fusion would not be possible. The same weak
force is also responsible for nuclear fission, when a large nuclei splits into two
daughter nuclei.

ANTIPARTICLES
But, what is an anti-neutrino or an anti-electron? It is an anti-particle. The fermions
have a total of 12 particles and also a reactionary 12 antiparticles. The main
difference between particles and antiparticles is the opposite charge. Example: up
quark has (+2/3) charge, anti-up quark has (-2/3) charge; down quark has (-1/3)
charge and anti-down quark has (+1/3) charge. Similarly, electrons have (-1) charge
and antielectrons have (+1) charge. Antielectrons are popularly referred to as
positrons. However, for the neutrinos - the charge is zero and the charge of
antineutrinos is also zero. How do we differentiate between them? That's where the
lepton number comes into play – but that’s a completely different topic for which we
haven’t got enough time.
Z BOSONS
Another boson is the Z boson which is also related to the Weak force. When a
particle and an antiparticle collide, it forms a Z boson with zero charge. The Z boson
is also unstable and decays into another particle and an antiparticle pair. The Z
boson has zero charge and thus the collision must take place between a particle
and an antiparticle for the Z boson to form.
Example: When an electron (-1) and a positron (+1) collide, they form a Z boson of
charge 0. Similarly, a meson also contains a quark and an antiquark, when they
collide, they form a Z boson. The Z boson further decays into another particle and
antiparticle pair.

HIGGS BOSON
Another boson is the Higgs boson, which is responsible for the mass of all
elementary particles, and the Z and W bosons. that is why it’s called, "the God
particle". However, it still remains as a mystery, and not much of it is known since
it’s discovery in 2012. Not just the Higgs boson, but all the elementary particles –
we have very little information about every elementary particle.

THE GRAVITATIONAL FORCE

There exist 4 fundamental forces in the universe - strong nuclear force, weak
nuclear force, electrostatic force, which we have all talked about; and the fourth
one - gravitational force. Scientists are trying to add another elementary particle
called graviton into the standard model, a force carrier (boson) which is responsible
for the gravitational force. However, they have been falling since they have been
unable to discover a force carrier responsible for gravitational force yet. Gravity
acts until infinite range, thus the graviton if it were to be added would be massless
and have a size smaller as compared to neutrinos.

However, the scientists on Earth are becoming cleverer day-by-day and maybe one
day, we will be able to understand everything that the universe has to offer….until
the aliens teach it to us 