Fundamental matter?

Question

We think of a 'thing' as existing based on the fact that it is made up of smaller 'things'. For example an apple exists because it is made up of atoms, the atoms exist because they are made up of protons electrons quarks etc, they in turn exist because (most probably) they are made of superstrings, that is about as far as we have got up till now, eventually however you must reach a point whereby there is a basic fundamental building block which exists just 'because it does' yes? and not because it is made of anything smaller. What do you think?

Answer 1

Well, eventually you hit the point where if there were continued substructure to matter that you hit the "Planck Energy" or the point at which you can't create a quanta of energy small enough to probe the structure. So, I'm kind of saying that if there is "infinite" substructure, that current physics would be unable to prove it.

However, we have every reason to believe that electrons are electrons and that's it. They prop up a lot of mathematical problems because of their lack of structure, so we're fairly certain that they're "fundamental". Quarks... well... that's another story. I'll get back to you when we build that solar system size high energy collider. :)

Answer 2

quarks are quite interesting though aren't they, the ramifications of what has been discovered there haven't even started, so the properties of the smallest parts of something. My head spins thinking about atoms with electron whizzing around them. Why must you think so aimlessly quantitively? I doubt there is an essentially smallest piece of something, I think the smaller you go, the more removed from understanding you will go. They say that there is enough energy in the vaccum of space in a 1 metre cubic area to boil all the oceans on earth- what could possibly be causing that? Dark matter? You got me..

Answer 3

We have already reached the point where matter can get no more fundamental. In order to find out what is inside a quark you need to smash it at high energy (or supply enough energy to pull it apart) to see its constituent parts. This has worked great to find the quarks in protons, the protons in nuclei, the nuclei in atoms etc....
However, with quarks we have reached an interesting impasse such that we can go no deeper.
A proton has 3 quarks, and mesons are quark-anti quark pairs (hence they are particles containing 2 quarks) that mediate the strong force)
When you try to supply enough energy to pull a single quark out of a proton (in order to then isolate what's inside it) you have to supply so much energy that (by E=mc2) you are supplying enough energy to create two new quarks (or anti quarks).
So when you pull hard on the one quark inside the proton, you give enough energy to create another quark to complete the proton, and an anti quark to combine with the quark you are pulling on turning it into a meson that comes away in your hand.
The harder you pull the more particles you create of a type that you already know. Since we can never isolate a single quark we can't find out what's inside it.
If, when you add more energy you just keep making particles you already know, you can't go any deeper....you're at the bottom.

Answer 4

I don't know if I completely agree with the argument "something exists because it is made up of something smaller." A baby cat exists because two cats in the woods in my backyard hung out one starry night. A machine built by humans exists because someone built it, with a conscious purpose. Not because it is made up of chemical elements. I do like the idea of a fundamental building block, but the fallacy in the above argument comes because once you take something in universe apart, the basic nature of the parts don't necessarily imply the thing you started with, especially on the blackboard.

Answer 5

there may be no end to 'smallness'. on a scale of orders of magnitude, there may or may not be and end. even all of the orders of magnitude that we know and imagine may only be a 'local region' of a larger (and possibly infinite) range, physically speaking. that we exist at all might be a question that tries to wrap its head around the questioner than it does about existence or reality. 'i think, therefore i am.", is about as far as we've gotten on that score, scientifically speaking. science takes place in the context of 'existence' (which comes with presupposeable baggage) and generally gets only the occassional and rare opportunity to test around the question you've asked. in the same way that an infinty of (theoretically) identifiable locations (and therefore space?) exist between the numbers 12 and 21. the more you start thinking that space and time are both natural dimensions that can describe 'existence', then the more you get comfortable substituting one for the other as a measure of space. for example, maybe the smallest of 'indivisible' particles in time is evolving into ever smaller bits over time? while at the same time bigger and bigger bits of galactic masses are grouping together into ever larger singular (singularity) locations.

Answer 6

'Because' is the wrong concept. An apple does not exist BECAUSE it is made up of atoms. If there is a reason for an apple, surely it's in the DNA - the genetic impetus, if you will, for the apple to exist.
Yes, science will continue to 'zoom in', and there may be a 'smallest thing' - but would we know if we found it? Or the realm of the small may be infinite, as may the realm of the large. But infinite is, quite literally, a concept too big to comprehend...

Answer 7

Strings are it. No little thingies making them up.

The basic idea is that the fundamental constituents of reality are strings of the Planck length (about 10−35 m) which vibrate at resonant frequencies. The tension of a string (8.9×1042 newtons) is about 1041 times the tension of an average piano string (735 newtons).

Answer 8

i think that the more one zooms the more empty space one finds. In essence the universe is a whole lot of empty space and we are a figment of our own imaginations - which are biochemical signals transmitted along conducting pathways which are composed of cells, atoms, protons, quarks, strings and hey empty space in between......

Answer 9

Maybe the "smallest building block" is nothing more than a localised distortion in the space-time continuum...

Answer 10

eventually there must be but will we ever be able to see it .........we had only got as far as quarks when i was in my 20's now we have nanotechnology so who knows how small we will get to see