Are Quarks the smallest elementary particles possible?
In: Physics
As far as physicists can figure out, there are four types of elementary particle in the universe: quarks, leptons (which electrons belong to), force-carriers, and the Higgs particle. That’s as far down as we can drill, but we don’t know whether anything smaller will pop up if we’re able to drill deeper.
There are still things that don’t fit with the Standard Model that could potentially point to other or smaller elementary particles, such as anomalous results from particle physics experiments and the existence of dark matter. But, until we get a full grasp on why they exist or happen, we won’t know if that’s the case or if there’s some other explanation.
So, the answer is yes. Unless it isn’t.
Probably so. Historically, there has been physics model with infinitely divisible matter, but those haven’t really been popular in the last century (since Planck, mostly). The word “elementary” really means that a particle is not made out of something smaller. And we are fairly certain there are some elementary particles.
The really hard part is proving that something is indeed an elementary particle. At some points, atoms were believe to be elementary (the word “atom” means indivisible), until we realized they are not.
In the modern standard model, Quarks are elementary particles. But finding out we’ve been wrong about that would be much less of a surprise than finding out there are no elementary particles.
Depends on what you mean by “smallest”.
If you mean “has the least amount of volume” then all elementary particles are treated as mathematical points: they have absolutely 0 volume. That is to say, they are all the same “size.”
If you mean “is not made of other things” then, again, all elementary particles are believed to be just that: elementary and not made of other things. We have no way of knowing if this is actually the case; we can only determine this within our ability to measure. It is not ruled out as a possibility.
So we don’t know if any of the particles we believe are elementary are actually composite, and we can never know if we’ve reached any sort of end point. And all the elementary particles are on the same footing in this regard.
Well, it’s not clear that the electron (or frankly any of these particles) has “width”, so that would be the smallest. Physics typically uses mass instead of shape for precisely that reason. In the mass sense electrons and neutrinos have less mass than a quark. The photon and gluon have no mass, so that’s the limit there.
We don’t have any experiments that break quarks into smaller things.
Quarks are made of positive charged dark matter and dark matter are made of positive charged dark energy, which is positive electromagnetic force.
Electrons are made of negative charged electron neutrinos and electron neutrinos are made of negative charged gravitons, which is negative electromagnetic force.
So dark energy is actually positive charged gravitons and gravity is made up mostly of negative charged gravitons since positive charge from the nucleus gets captured by the enveloping electrons but the electron’s negative charge radiates so the nucleus only captures some of the negative charge.
So the side of the electron facing outwards will not be captured since the proton is on the opposite side thus most negative charge is not captured thus exerts a gravitational force.
Note that such is not yet accepted by the scientific community so stating such in exams may not score points, though there was a recent paper stating gravity does not need mass so maybe there is some support for the claim about gravity being negative charged.
They are called elementary because from what we know they aren’t made of other things.
Only thing I know that would fit what you say is a string from string theory, but that requires the string theory to be true.
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