Every day you learn
something new. Today, for
reasons unbeknowst to me,
I decided to
surf the Internet for information on
particle physics. I stumbled upon
The Particle Adventure http://www.particleadventure.org/ and much to my surprise, I
discovered just how
ignorant I am of this
Universe. When I was in
grade school, I only had knowledge of
stuff. I didn't know what this
stuff was, I just knew that
it made
everything. Then in
middle school I discovered (i.e. was
taught) that this
stuff that
constituted all things was called
matter, and that its smallest
unit was the
atom. Then
high school settled in, and I was taught
chemistry and
physics on a more formal level. From this I learned that
atoms were actually composed of smaller parts, and that you couldn't get
smaller than an
electron,
proton, or a
neutron. And this leads up as to why I'm
noding in the
particle physics node.
Being a bit curious about science and having heard a bit about quarks and antimatter, I realized that I never really learned their significance or their composition, until today. I spent a good two hours reading and was fascinated about how our world is not merely a world of atoms, but a world of quarks, leptons, force carrier particles, and dark matter. The ideas which once were burned firmly into my brain had to be discarded; I had to accept so many new ideas and concepts that I could hardly believe what I had read. Color (yeah, I know it's not really color in the radiation sense, but cut me some slack) became a property of particles, incredibly small particles known as neutrinos began to pass through the Earth without making contact with another single particle, and particles became the cause of all known forces (interactions). The seemingly simple world in which I lived vanished, and was replaced by a complex, more sophisticated one. If there ever were a time for me to use the word epiphany, it was then.
I realize that many, many people have accepted these facts long before I even knew they existed, but I cannot help but wonder how many fail to realize that our vast Universe is composed of almost insignifcantly-sized particles, which are composed of yet smaller particles. The seemingly contradictory nature of the Universe leaves me spellbound and enchanted; how can something so incredibly large be made up of things so very, very small? At times like these, I can't help but think how much easier it would be if I could just dig Einstein up or get Steven Hawking mailed to me...