What is Particle Theory?
Particle theory is an incredibly widely believed theory of matter, which holds, essentially, that matter is made up of small particles which are constantly moving. Particle theory is the domain of particle physics, which is also known as high-energy physics, because many of the most fundamental particles don’t generally occur in nature, but can be generated by creating extremely high-energy interactions between particles. The predecessor to modern particle theory dates back all the way to ancient Greece, when philosophers in the 6th century BCE held that there were fundamental particles of matter. For thousands of years after this, however, particle theory vanished through most of the world, with various other theories springing up instead. In the 19th century, however, it made a comeback, with a scientist named John Dalton proposing a fundamental, indivisible particle that made up all matter. He named this particle the atom, from the Greek word that meant indivisible. By the end of th
O.K., Ready? Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the elementary constituents of matter and radiation, and the interactions between them. It is also called “high energy physics”, because many elementary particles do not occur under normal circumstances in nature, but can be created and detected during energetic collisions of other particles, as is done in particle accelerators. Contents [hide] 1 Subatomic particles 2 History 3 The Standard Model 4 Experiment 5 Theory 6 Reductionism 7 Public policy 8 The future 9 New directions in particle theory 10 See also 11 External links [edit] Subatomic particles Modern particle physics research is focused on subatomic particles, which have less structure than atoms. These include atomic constituents such as electrons, protons, and neutrons (protons and neutrons are actually composite particles, made up of quarks), particles produced by radiative and scattering processes, such as photons, neutrinos, and muons, as well as a wide ran
