quark

[japan rocks/andromeda]

well we know that quarks are the smallest particles but what if there are things smaller than that I think it is possible to see if there is one smaller thing

 

 

 

 

There are six types of quarks, known as flavors: up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom.[4] Up and down quarks have the lowest masses of all quarks. The heavier quarks rapidly change into up and down quarks through a process of particle decay: the transformation from a higher mass state to a lower mass state. Because of this, up and down quarks are generally stable and the most common in the universe, whereas charm, strange, top, and bottom quarks can only be produced in high energy collisions (such as those involving cosmic rays and in particle accelerators). ~ wikepedia the free encyclopedia

 

 

so what if one of those types of heavier masses have something smaller in them like "subquarks" or "milliquarks" ?

[Mr Skeptic]

Leptons (such as electrons) are lighter than quarks, and also considered point particles. Also, leptons do not have to come in triplets or matter/antimatter pairs. So I'd say leptons are smaller. And even lighter than that are neutrinos, which are so light we can't even be sure they have mass (but have theoretical reasons to think they do). And photons are massless.

 

It could be that our so-called fundamental particles are themselves made up of other things. There's theoretical reason to think they aren't, but they could be if our theories are wrong. So far, there is no evidence I can see for that, but it will never be possible to say for certain. And then there's string theory.

[ajb]

To my knowledge deep inelastic scattering experiments suggest that quarks are point-like. Though I imagine this is only really examining up and down quarks.

 

What is true for sure is that deep inelastic scattering provides evidence for the standard model. Here all the quarks are fundamental and point-like. Any internal structure to the quarks would presumably allow for exited states and resonances. These would potentially have observable effects. In particular there would be particles that look like "higher mass quarks" which would in fact be due to an excited state. The situation would be analogous to that of the multitude of hardons we observe.

[between3and26characterslon]

To my knowledge deep inelastic scattering experiments suggest that quarks are point-like. Though I imagine this is only really examining up and down quarks.

 

What is true for sure is that deep inelastic scattering provides evidence for the standard model. Here all the quarks are fundamental and point-like. Any internal structure to the quarks would presumably allow for exited states and resonances. These would potentially have observable effects. In particular there would be particles that look like "higher mass quarks" which would in fact be due to an excited state. The situation would be analogous to that of the multitude of hardons we observe.

 

To be honest I don't observe that many.