What Is (Almost) Everything Made Of?

Physicist Richard Feynman compares understanding the laws of nature to watching gods play chess, glimpsing only snippets of the board. Great discoveries in physics often involve revelations about how different phenomena link together under deeper, simpler rules. But there are always perplexing exceptions that force theories to be re-written.

The Hitomi X-ray astronomy satellite spins out of control and breaks apart after passing through the South Atlantic Anomaly, a dent in Earth's magnetic field. This exposed it to high radiation levels from space which fried its circuits. Earth's magnetism usually protects us from such radiation.

James Clerk Maxwell's equations show that electric and magnetic fields are components of a unified electromagnetic field. Changing one changes the other because they are part of the same thing. His work inspired the search for similar unifications of nature's forces under quantum field theories.

The reason we don't fall through floors is that electrons in atoms exchange virtual photons, pushing apart. So we actually float on clouds of particles that aren't really there. As physicist Frank Wilczek says, "What you see isn't what you get."

Willis Lamb saw microwave photons from hydrogen atoms that shouldn't exist according to theory. This tiny unexpected energy level split, called the Lamb shift, had huge implications. It showed there were gaps in understanding that led to quantum electrodynamics and the concept of virtual particles.

To explain the Lamb shift, the electromagnetic field is quantized with photons as the minimum vibrations. Electrons are vibrations in a separate quantum electron field. Particles interact by exchanging energy between vibrating quantum fields. This bizarre vision explains why we float on clouds of virtual particles.

The random conversion of carbon-14 atoms into nitrogen-14 is governed by the weak nuclear force and beta decay. Physicists developed a quantum field theory for the weak force with heavy bosons called W and Z particles responsible for different types of beta decay interactions.

Experiments show protons and neutrons are made of quarks bound by the strong force carried by gluons. But the discovery of the Omega-minus particle led to the concept of color charge to distinguish between identical quarks. This allowed the development of quantum chromodynamics to explain quark interactions.

Quarks carry color charges red, blue or green. Gluons carry combined color-anticolor charges, allowing net color neutral particles like protons. Virtual gluons and quarks make up 99% of protons' mass. The strong nuclear force binding atomic nuclei is mediated by different virtual mesons.

Electroweak theory and quantum chromodynamics explain all subatomic particles and 3 forces as quantum fields. The discovery of the Higgs boson confirmed the Standard Model, with 17 overlapping quantum fields creating matter, forces and mass through vibrations.

Describing gravity with virtual gravitons leads to infinities and other contradictions. General relativity treats it as curved spacetime, incompatible with quantum fields. Super-accelerators may find evidence for Loop Quantum Gravity which stitches spacetime from quantum threads.