That's small. You're small.

Scientists have come to the conclusion that protons, electrons, and neutrons are the smallest particles. But they’ve often wondered what holds those particles together and what causes them to have negative, positive, and even no charges. This curiosity led to the discovery of the two fundamental forces: quarks and leptons.

            Quarks are divided into six flavors according to three generations of matter. The six flavors or the six kinds of quarks can be characterized by their particularly funny names: up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom. Quarks have electric charges in units of 1/3s or 2/3s. Quarks do not exist freely, or on their own. They do not like to be separated from each other so all quarks much be bound to another by the exchanging of gluons (particle forces that keep the quarks together). They always travel in pairs or in threes. The same goes for the antiquarks. A hadron is a type of quark. They are particles that interact by strong forces which are baryons and mesons.

            Leptons are another one of the two fundamental particles. There are six leptons as well as well as quarks. They are their own particles. Electrons and neutrons are classified as leptons.

            Antimatter particles are the corresponding particles to matter. Although its mass is the same as matter, its sign or charge is different. Every particle in the universe has an “anti” particle that compliments them. “Anti” meaning the opposite charge.

            Scientists have played around with trying to figure out how the universe was created. They’ve come up with the “Big Bang” theory which believes that the universe was created when particles of matter collided with its antiparticles with the opposite charge. With a huge explosion, the universe was created; stars planets, solar systems, and the universe in general. The Large Hadron Collider is created to try and discover more about that theory. It lies 574 feet below the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. It is designed to collide proton particle beams.

            The Large Hadron Collier was created by European scientists in the hopes of testing high-energy physics. The project costs approximately 9 billion United States dollars. The tubes that exchange particles are colder than the space between the stars, which is extremely cold!

            Scientists have yet to discover exactly how the universe is created, or if their hypotheses are correct or not. But there are still much, much more information they have to obtain in order to have a solid idea of how the universe was created, and how we all exist.