Are Quarks the smallest elementary particles possible?
In: Physics
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.
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