I often read about the universe, astrophysics or similar. It's not that I am great at the subjects but I find them fascinating.
From time to time I read articles on universal topics, including for example the universe. I also listen to a great podcast by Neil deGrasse Tyson called StarTalk, which talks a lot about astrophysics, the universe and often times the little nitty gritty including particles. To keep myself sane and off wikipedia during these shows, reading and podcasts I created a cheat sheet about particles and how all the terms relate.
If this is TMI then I don't blame you for going to the next post. I hope you'll find it useful though to have as a quick reference or background.
Elementary particles:
- Quarks & Leptons which are Fermions --> obey Fermi–Dirac statistics
- Gauge & Scalar Bosons --> obey Bose–Einstein statistics
Baryons are Fermions which have 1/2 spins and make among other things Protons and Neutrons
Protons and Neutrons make up most of the universe's visible matter
Leptons are Elementary Particles with 1/2 spins which form among other things electrons
Bosons have full spins (they would wouldn't they)
Fermions make up what we consider the core parts of atoms (protons, neutrons, electrons)
Gauge Bosons are the force particles:
Photon --> Electromagnetic Force
Gluons --> Strong Nuclear Force
Z, W Bosons --> Weak Nuclear Force
From Strong --> Weak --> Electromagnetic --> Gravity, forces act on progressively larger distances, but become progressively weaker
The Higgs Boson gives the other particles mass via interactions with them
Quarks are held together by the Strong Nuclear Force
The Weak Nuclear Force causes radioactive decay
Atoms are held together by the Electromagnetic Force -- i.e. the electron is held to the nucleus (protons and neutrons)
Quarks all have equivalent anti-quarks
Baryons are 3 quark composite particles --> ex proton, neutron Mesons are 2 quark composite particles, necessarily 1 quark and 1 anti-quark
And a Graviton is thought to exist which is what creates Gravity but it is yet to be discovered
As for Dark Matter and Dark Energy - don't ask
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