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The
particle family structure
At the lowest level so
far discovered there are twelve kinds of matter
particles: six quarks and six leptons.
The matter particles
come in three "families". Each family consists
of two quarks and two leptons. In addition to
the matter particles there are other particles,
force particles. These are responsible for
three of our known forces - strong,
electromagnetic and weak. Only the force of
gravity falls outside their sphere of
influence. The essential difference between
quarks and leptons is that leptons are not
affected by the strong force. The families, on
the other hand, behave very much like copies of
each other.
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Man seeks answers about his home, the
Universe, which was created in the Big Bang
some 15,000 million years ago. What does it
consist of? What are its smallest building
blocks and what are their properties? What can
they tell us of the history of the Universe and
its future?
This year's Nobel
Laureates, through the discovery of the tau and
the neutrino, have increased our knowledge of
the cosmos.
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| For its
first instant the Universe was a hot soup of
subatomic particles, including quarks and
leptons. These were what determined the later
development of the Universe, including the
division between matter and
antimatter. |
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