I believe it was aristotle, i could be wrong, but he once had an inquiry, and it was this. If i have a stick of butter and i keep cutting it in half, can i cut it in half until i can do so no longer? Well in approximately 450 BCE, Democritus made the term átomos which means "uncuttable". His answer to this question was no. he beielved there was an indivisible particle, much too small to be seen. Was he on to something, or was aristotle?

The atom

Modern day, the theoretical atom has given birth to equally theoretical babies, sub-atomic particles

proton (+)
electron (-)
neutron (n)

im leaving out a truckload of them, to name some we have leptons, quarks, photons, muons, tauons.. and other. but the three above are the most known and the most useful.

I have a question, actually.... tons, but besides that i have one.

how many times can you cut a sub-atomic particle in half until you can do so no longer? i understand that the arrangements of said particles above create all of the diversity within elements, but ultimately you can keep cutting the butter can't you?

It is shown by experiments that atomic theory has proven useful, it makes predictions and the predictions concur with the results. i dont believe in atomic theory but it is very useful. i guess i could say im not an "Atomist" eh? lol.

So far, we have not been able to divide the subatomic particles into smaller ones; fermions and bosons are currently the smallest isolatable "piece" of matter.

As far as what we think of as "matter", it is all composed of fermions, of which there are twelve: six quarks (up, down, top, bottom, charm, and strange), and six leptons (the electron, the muon, the tau, and the electron neutrino, muon neutrino, and tau neutrino). Each of the twelve fermions also has an antiparticle (such as a positron, the antiparticle of an electron).

Quarks also carry a color charge, which means they have a color (red, green, blue) in addition to a flavor (top, charm, up, etc.). The "color" of a quark has nothing to do with any observable color, but simply because it is seen as simpler than using letters or something else (and, as Bill Bryson notes, it probably has something to do with the fact that a lot of this research was carried out at the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology in the 1960s). Furthermore, quarks also have an electric charge, so they are affected by the strong and weak nuclear forces and the electromagnetic force.

Of the leptons, the electron, muon, and tau all carry an electric charge, whereas neutrinos do not, making them ridiculously difficult to detect. All leptons are color-neutral, meaning the strong nuclear force does not affect them.

Protons and neutrons are composed of different arrangements of three quarks. Different quarks carry different charges, so the three quarks in a proton have charges summing to 1e - the electron's charge is the standard unit of charge in particle physics - and the charges on the three quarks in a neutron sum to zero.

For more, read on about the Standard Model of Particle Physics.

The Standard Model, while explaining quantum interactions with some level of reliability, has one gaping hole: no part of it accounts for the existence of gravity. Therefore, particle physics is a continually evolving field as scientists attempt to discern more about the subatomic nature of matter and force.

So, to answer your dividing question, the prevailing wisdom is that there will be a level where you cannot neatly divide something in half again. But, as with all science, the answer is not absolute and much is still not known about the world of the very small.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 30 2008, 6:56 pm by DT_Battlekruser.

In the latest Science News weekly magazine the main article is about the new CERN particle accelerator which will try to prove the existence of the Higgs boson.

The simple answer to your question is yes. The real question is can Dark Matter be divided?

How can you experiment, let alone divide something which cannot be seen?

That is what scientists want to and are trying to find out.
Edit: Well obviously not all scientists.

Why are you talking about Dark Matter?
It should be about Matter or Anti-Matter.
And for the CERN thing, I've read that the approximations says that we will need up to 2 TeraVolt to find out the Higgs boson and the new CERN shit will go up to 14 TeV!!

Dark matter is not antimatter. And 1 V != 1 eV. Electron-volts are a measure of energy and volts are a measure of electrical potential.

Doing it the fun way. Accelerating it up to incredible speeds then making it collide against other atoms. Particle accelerators literally blow them up

Also they can use even smaller things to detect that. (Electrons)

everything about particles is highly theoritical. The usen detectors are pretty advanced material, so they use high amount of energy and matter.

i don't know muchabout the process particle colliders work. I know they use electrically charged particles (or how it is called) and large magnets. then, on several spot, two beam of that matter collid, and there are detectors, which react to the upcomming radiation (caused by collision maybe?) and computers register values showed by detectors and thats all i know.

There is a big differance between a hypothesis and a theory and some random idea.

Lol.. well said


It doesnt matter wether we can or cannot divide it as of yet... it only matters if we can understand it.

Learn 2 read.

He never said it was.