How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?
Plausible answers range from 17 to — in all seriousness — 995.5. The post How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The answer ranges from 17 to nearly 1,000 depending on how you count — a reminder that even our most fundamental physics is partly a matter of framework, not just fact. Relevant for Protocol: the categories we use to count reality are not neutral.
Every time I write about particle physics, I encounter a moment of uncertainty about a quantity that, at first glance, ought to be clear. How many kinds of elementary particles should I say there are? In experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, physicists smash together beams of protons, breaking them up into all possible elementary bits and pieces. Meanwhile, they have an incredibly accurate…
Original author: Natalie Wolchover