What's Next?

All matter is made up of a handful of quarks and leptons. Actually 99.9% of matter is made up of the 3 particles in green. When we get to such a small scale often the only way to explain the behaviour of these particles is to use quantum physics (were probability is king) and ideas like wave particle duality.

Quarks				Leptons
u	d	c	s	e	µ		v
u	d	c	s	e	µ		v

Neutrinos

A lot of interesting discoveries have been made about neutrinos. It seems now that instead of there being electron, mu and tau nutrinos there is only one kind which oscillates between the three states. Did you know that every second more than a billion neutrinos from the sun go through an area on your body the size of your thumbnail every second.

String Theory

One theory is that all of these particles are made of "strings". Tiny bits of something which oscillate like standing waves. How they oscillate depends on what quark they become.

GUT Theory

A holy grail for scientists is a Grand Unifying Theory (GUT) which ties together all the forces of nature. Since electric and magnetic forces were discovered to be manifestations of the same force scientists have thought that it might be possible that gravitational and the two types of nuclear force could also be linked in a similar way.