What is held within the smallest particles of matter?
Neutrinos are the smallest bits of mass. Until recently, we thought they were massless, that’s how small their masses are. Now we know they have a bit of mass and travel just under light speed. Neutrinos are found throughout the universe. They are spawned from the stars and their fusion reactions. There are also neutrinos within other subatomic particles. And they appear in certain atomic reactions as by products of those reactions. That being said, the smallest bit of mass that goes into making up the elements and all matter around us is the quark. It’s larger than the neutrino mass, but it is critical to us in that two up quarks and one down quark make up each proton and two down quarks and one up quark make up each proton. That is, without the quarks, there would be no atoms and there would be no matter.
