• Question: What is matter made of?

    Asked by anon-267545 on 10 Nov 2020.
    • Photo: Roan Haggar

      Roan Haggar answered on 10 Nov 2020:

      The matter than we can see is made of atoms, which are made of particles called protons, neutrons and electrons. Protons and neutrons are in turn made of even smaller particles, called quarks. We believe that quarks and electrons are ‘fundamental’, which basically means that they’re the smallest particles you can get, and they can’t be broken down any more. Asking what these are made of is a much more complicated question, and one that you probably need a particle physicist to answer!
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      But, about 85% of matter in the Universe is stuff that we can’t see, called ‘dark matter’. We know how this matter acts, but we still have very little idea what it is made of. It may be made of a new type of particle that we haven’t discovered, or made of small black holes (called ‘primordial black holes’), or something even more unusual! Hope this helps.

    • Photo: Daisy Shearer

      Daisy Shearer answered on 11 Nov 2020:

      Matter is made up of elementary particles which combine to make particles and atoms. Some elementary particles (which just means that physicists don’t think they can be broken up into smaller bits) are electrons and quarks. There are six different types of quark and they combine to make lots of different particles like protons and neutrons. Physicists have something called ‘The Standard Model of Particle Physics’ which describes all the elementary particles.

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