Is there a common particle involved?

Question

There are dozens of types of sub-atomic particles, is there a common particle among them, and if so, wouldn't that be the one particle that makes up all matter of the universe?

What about a common behavior?

Answer 1

When you can demonstrate mathmatically that 'one' exists (possibly some particular undulation of the string membrane) you will win a Nobel Prize. Good luck. And it seems only yesterday that they spoke Greek and wondered about the 'atom'........ calling Prof Hawkings, calling Prof Hawkings.......Einstein wants you.

Answer 2

The universe is basically made up of the up and down quark and the electron and the neutrino. The neutrino has so little mass and doesn't interact too easily so you can forget about it. The up and down quarks make up the neutron and proton. The electron is an elementary particle with no components. There is a whole menagerie of other particles but they only pop up in particle accelerators and cosmic rays. They are short lived and transient so you can forget about them.

Answer 3

Yes, there COULD be one sub-atomic particle common to whole of the space in the universe, but we can never be sure of it. In fact, scientists in the 18th & 19th centuries believed that there was indeed an 'element' common to all places in the universe, & this element was named ETHER. But this idea was given up due to the several flaws it possessed; & the death blow to this idea came from the Michaelson-Morley experiment.
You could always assume that such a particle exists, on firm theoretical grounds, if it helps in the understanding of certain less-understood facts. But, no one has ever practically found a particle common to all the places he has OBSERVED. Moreover, even if someone finds one such particle to exist in the OBSERVABLE universe, how could he be sure that it exists throughout the universe, because universe is believed to be limitless (by most of the scientists) & no one would be able to practically carry out experiments in the whole of the universe to carry out its verification.

Answer 4

There is no one particle, but there are groups of particles and these behave according to what are called symmetries.

Most of the mass in the universe is made up of particles called quarks. They clump in groups of three to form protons and neutrons.

But I'm afraid that the menagerie of fundamental particles is more rather than less complex than you think.

For more see www.particleadventure.org

Answer 5

Yes and no. Indeed, the dazzling variety of the subatomic particles can be shown to be combinations of a much fewer number of basic components. These are quarks and leptons. You have a total of 6 quarks and 6 leptons.

At the current level of our understanding of the Universe, we cannot postulate just one primordial particle.