What are quarks made of? What are the things that make up quarks made of? How far down does it go?
In: Chemistry
Others have said that quarks aren’t made of constituent particles, which is true, but that still doesn’t really answer what they are. Fundamental particles are all packets of energy in a field.
Quantum field theory says that all of space has these “overlapping” fields. You can think of the universe like an ocean except instead of water, it’s a *field* – actually, many fields. So, many oceans that occupy the same space. A wave in one of these “oceans” is a particle. Remember Einstein’s equation, e=mc^2 , which tells us that mass and energy are the same thing. Put enough energy into one place and you get mass. That’s what particles are – bundled up energy in the field, which are waves and also particles (because they are both).
The waves can interact with other “oceans”, transferring energy between them as “splashes” that create waves in the other fields, which are particles. For example, an electron is a big wave in the electron field and when it has too much energy, it dumps the energy into the electromagnetic field, which creates a photon. The photon travels through space and then gets absorbed by another electron, or proton, or other charged particle, which gives that particle energy.
Quarks are packets of energy in the quark field. They are charged particles, which means they trade energy with the electromagnetic field. They also trade energy into the gluon field, which carries “color charge” which has absolutely nothing to do with visible color or photons, it’s just called that because scientists like to be confusing.
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