I’m fascinated with all these subatomic particles I never even knew existed, and I don’t know what their purpose is, how they’re different from our typical atoms, and where they’re found. Like bosons, leptons, quarks etc.
In: Physics
Physics doesn’t really do *why* – they just exist. Asking that is the same as asking why *anything* exists.
Their purpose? Some quarks are stable inside of protons and neutrons (each is made of 3 quarks), some carry forces (photons are how the electromagnetic force moves through space), and a lot of them don’t really exist out in nature except for super high energy levels. These ones almost immediately fall apart when we create them. So, it’s really only a fraction of the fundamental particles that are “important” in the functioning of our daily world.
Neutrinos are stable, commonly produced as byproducts of solar fusion, but have almost no mass so they move almost the speed of light, and no electromagnetic charge so they can fly straight through the electron cloud of an atom. About 100 trillion neutrinos shoot harmlessly through your body (and the whole Earth) every single second, just flying in a direction away from the Sun forever.
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