Could quarks really be just wiggling loops of nothing?

Yesterday I brought home a book from the library titled, "The Search For the Quark". When I went to school we were taught that the fundamental particles were protons, neutrons and electrons. It turns out that the nucleus of an atom is made up of quarks! I tell you that to tell you this: At the time of the search for the quark I was a working at a start up company based in the Stanford Industrial Park. The search was being conducted primarily at the nearby Stanford Linear Accelerator. See the connection? We developed a close relationship with the Stanford people even to the point of putting a sign on our instrument "Odd Quark Detector". I still think the name 'quark' is humorous. The book was written 1988 which was just prior to the revelation of string theory. Could the quarks really be just wiggling loops of nothing? Any way it should be an interesting trip through history.
One of the things that the book brought to mind was how recent we, and by extension quantum mechanics, really is. The universe is about 14 billion years old (or 7 days whichever you believe) and the earth is about 4 billion years old (or 7 days whichever you believe). The early days of understanding the atom is 0nly 100 years old (no matter what you believe). Before that science was mostly myth. Maybe it's a reminder of how ephemeral our existence really is.
Remember Hiroshima and Nagaski. May it never happen again.
Things I don't understand show me that we're all on this flight together.

Dick