h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If I remember correctly, there are 6 anti-quarks as well?

I'd postulate that the sub-quark particle is like a piece of celery, it takes more enery to eat it than there is energy in it, if you catch my drift

The work done to build the sub-atomic particle architecture is amazing and innovative. I heard the've tried computer modelling a helium atom using a quark model. They used a super-computer and it took a long time (~years).

My favourite quark is either the strange or charmed...

There is an anti-quark for each quark. Plus, there is the matter of colour charge (red, green, and blue) and their anti-charges (anti-red, anti-green, and anti blue, sometimes displayed as cyan, magenta, and yellow for convenience purposes). However, the colour charge is an ever-changing thing, because in quark groups, gluons carry the colour charge and are being constantly exchanged. This is what keeps them bound together.

~Sirona

colour here is of course just a label; quarks are much smaller than the wavelength of visible light so they can't have colour as we know it.

I think "anti-matter" isn't very clearly defined in this entry...

The corresponding anti-matter particle to any particle is simply a particle with equal mass and opposite charge. As the proton is appx. 1 amu (atomic mass unit) and has a charge of +1, the anti-proton has a mass of 1 amu and a charge of -1. The electron has a mass of around 1/1840 amu and a charge of -1, and its antiparticle, called the positron, has a mass of 1/1840 amu and a charge of +1.



~Sirona