The Standard Model is a kind of periodic table of the elements for particle physics. But instead of listing the chemical elements, it lists the fundamental particles that make up the atoms that make up the chemical elements, along with any other particles that cannot be broken down into any smaller pieces.
The complete Standard Model took a long time to build. Physicist J.J. Thomson discovered the electron in 1897, and scientists at the Large Hadron Collider found the final piece of the puzzle, the Higgs boson, in 2012. (Source: Symmetry Physics Magazine).
Standard model of elementary particles: the 12 fundamental fermions and 5 fundamental bosons. Brown loops indicate which bosons (red) couple to which fermions (purple and green) (Source of the image: PBS NOVA [1], Fermilab, Office of Science, United States Department of Energy, Particle Data Group).
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