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Reference
While this takes shape

Most things that appear complex are built from a surprisingly small number of underlying components.

If you want to look beneath the surface, start here.

Descend
Standard Model · a narrative

Look up.

Every star you see, every atom in your fingertips, is built from the same short list of pieces.

This is the map.

Scroll to fall through it
Hand10⁰ m
Atom10⁻¹⁰ m
Nucleus10⁻¹⁴ m
Quarks10⁻¹⁸ m
Stage The hand
On small screens, each stage is shown in sequence below.
The cast

Twelve particles. That is almost all of it.

All matter we have ever directly detected is made from twelve particles: six quarks and six leptons. They come in three generations of increasing mass. We live in the first.

Quarks Leptons
Quarks · Three generations
1968
u
Up
2.2 MeV/c²+2/3
1974
c
Charm
1.27 GeV/c²+2/3
1995
t
Top
173 GeV/c²+2/3
1968
d
Down
4.7 MeV/c²−1/3
1968
s
Strange
95 MeV/c²−1/3
1977
b
Bottom
4.18 GeV/c²−1/3
Leptons · Three generations
1897
e
Electron
0.511 MeV/c²−1
1936
μ
Muon
105.7 MeV/c²−1
1975
τ
Tau
1776.9 MeV/c²−1
1956
νe
Electron neutrino
<2 eV/c²0
1962
νμ
Muon neutrino
<2 eV/c²0
2000
ντ
Tau neutrino
<2 eV/c²0
Almost everything you are made of is built from just three of these. Up quarks, down quarks, and electrons. The other nine particles are rare, heavier cousins. They exist only briefly under energetic conditions, then decay back down into the first generation.
The forces

Three forces. Three messengers.

Matter does nothing on its own. Every interaction in the Standard Model is carried by a particle. Light, nuclear binding, radioactivity. Each has a messenger.

Electromagnetism
Photon
Massless · Spin 1 · γ
The force of light, electricity, chemistry. Every photograph you have ever seen and every signal this screen sends is a photon doing its job.
Strong Force
Gluon
Massless · Spin 1 · g
The force that holds quarks inside protons and neutrons, and protons and neutrons inside the nucleus. The most tightly coupled thing in nature.
Weak Force
W and Z bosons
80.4 · 91.2 GeV/c² · Spin 1
Heavy and short-ranged. The force behind radioactive decay, behind the fusion that powers every star, and ultimately, behind every hot meal you have ever eaten.
The Higgs

The reason anything has weight.

A field, everywhere. Fill it into every empty space in the universe, because it is already there. Particles move through it.

Some particles move through unaffected. Photons, for example, have no mass. They slip through the Higgs field as if it were not there.

Other particles drag through it. The more they drag, the heavier they are. What we call mass is really the friction of passing through a field.

Confirmed
4 July 2012 · CERN
What the map does not show

The Standard Model is incomplete.

It is the most precisely tested theory we have, and almost everything it predicts has been confirmed. But step back, and most of the universe is missing from it.

  1. Gravity. The one force we experience most directly has no place in the Standard Model. It is missing entirely.
  2. Dark matter. Galaxies rotate as if there is five times more matter than we can see. We have never directly detected what it is.
  3. Dark energy. Something is pushing the universe apart at an accelerating rate. We do not know what.
  4. Neutrino mass. Neutrinos have mass, but the Standard Model was built assuming they did not. The theory needs revision.
  5. Matter without a partner. The big bang should have made equal amounts of matter and antimatter. There is a small, enormous asymmetry we cannot yet explain.
Detected
5%
Ordinary matter5%
Dark matter27%
Dark energy68%
How we got here

It took 115 years to build the map.

1897
The electronJ. J. Thomson identifies the first known subatomic particle, overturning the idea that the atom is indivisible.
1932
The neutronJames Chadwick completes the basic picture of the atom. The nucleus has two kinds of pieces, not one.
1956
Neutrino detectedCowan and Reines catch a particle Wolfgang Pauli had predicted 26 years earlier and once described as impossible to observe.
1964
Quarks proposedGell-Mann and Zweig suggest that protons and neutrons are not fundamental. Inside, there are smaller things.
1974 to 1995
Charm, bottom, topThree more quarks are confirmed in sequence. The top quark, the heaviest particle known, is found at Fermilab in 1995.
1983
W and Z bosonsThe carriers of the weak force are observed directly at CERN. The Standard Model's predicted masses are confirmed.
2000
Tau neutrinoThe last of the six leptons is finally observed, completing the three generations of matter.
2012
The Higgs bosonDecades after Peter Higgs and others proposed it, the particle that gives mass to mass is observed at CERN. The map is complete.

The universe fits in a diagram that would cover one wall of a classroom.

The parts we still cannot draw cover the other 95 percent of everything there is.

Keep looking up
Built on the Standard Model of Particle Physics.
Source reference: U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science.