Quarks are theoretical particles that make up protons and neutrons, and together with leptons, make up all visible matter. They interact with all four fundamental forces and have varying masses. Physicists are searching for quark matter, a hypothetical lattice found in compact stars.
A quark is a theoretical tiny particle that makes up protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus. Along with gluons, quarks also make up more exotic hadrons such as mesons, which are not stable. It is called theorist because, although it is supposed that its existence makes physical theory better, it has never been directly observed.
Together with leptons – electrons, muons, tau and their associated neutrinos and antiparticles – quarks make up all visible matter in the universe. They are the only fundamental particles that interact with each other through all four fundamental forces: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and gravity. A fundamental property of these particles is confinement: all quarks constitute hadrons and are never necessarily independent. Descriptions of their physical properties emerged from quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of the strong nuclear force that holds the atomic nucleus together.
Like all other subatomic particles, quarks can be fully described by three quantum numbers: spin J, parity P, and mass m. Since they are never isolated, these properties must be inferred by looking at the larger particles they make up. There are six known types: up, down, charm, weird, high, and low. These names are purely arbitrary and suggest nothing about the properties of each quark.
The normal matter that makes up most of the universe is made up of up and down quarks, which are the lightest particles. A proton is made up of two up and one down quark, while a neutron is made up of two down and one up quark.
Quarks have varying masses, measured in GeV (giga electron volts) over the speed of light squared. Subatomic particles are measured in terms of the energy they produce rather than their mass in grams. The down quark is about double the up quark. The strange is about 20 times more massive than the down quark. The charm quark is about 10 times more massive than that, followed by the bottom quark, which is about three times as massive as the last, and finally the top quark, which is the most massive of all. The increase in mass tends to correspond to the scarcity of the particle and requires more exotic physical conditions for its manifestation.
Physicists are looking for theorized quark matter, a hypothetical lattice made of continuous quarks connected by gluons. It is not yet known whether this type of matter is physically possible. If so, it would likely be found in the cores of extremely compact stars that have not yet collapsed into a black hole.
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