Hadrons, baryons and leptons are classes of elementary particles which make up the familiar protons, neutrons and electrons about which we learned in high school science (I hope). These are the pieces which make up everything we see and touch. Chairs to bears, cycles to cyclones, YouTube to two tubes, quarks to larks and galaxies to tiny fleas. Everything. Then about a decade ago two new terms came around. Dark matter and dark energy. We know something is out there because of the gravitational effects on the world around us but we have NO idea what it is, where it comes from or why regular matter is subject to its gravitational pull but we can't use it. It turns out that what we see, hear and touch is only 25% of what is in our Universe! The other 75% ( by far the majority) is compsed of: (a) dark energy which causes our Universe to expand and (b) dark matter which causes our Universe to contract ... and we have no idea what they are or what they do. Discussing hadrons, baryons and leptons and leaving out the dark stuff is rather like discussing how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.
Hadrons, baryons and leptons make my head spin with proof that we're all on this flight together.
Dick
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment