| Quarks | Quark Charge | Leptons | Lepton Charge |
| Up Quark | +2/3 | Electron | -1 |
| Down Quark | -1/3 | Electron Neutrino | 0 |
The First family of matter is composed of the up quark, the down quark, the electron and the electron neutrino. These particles make up virtually all the "normal" matter in the universe including all the chemical elements since all the atoms are comprised of electrons, protons and neutrons and electrons are truly elementary particles (as far as we know) and neutrons are made of 1 up quark and two down quarks for a charge or 2 x -1/3 + 2/3 =0 and the proton is made of two up quarks and one down quark for a charge for the proton of 2 x 2/3 + -1/3=+1.0. Electron neutrinos are also very common but they have no charge and virtually no mass and are not subject to the strong nuclear force but are only affected by the weak nuclear force so do not react and are not affected by normal matter.
| Quarks | Quark Charge | Leptons | Lepton Charge |
| Strange Quark | -1/3 | Muon | -1 |
| Charm Quark | +2/3 | Muon Neutrino | 0 |
The second family of matter forms mostly elementary particles that are unstable to some degree of another and do not normally occur in our universe except in special circumstances such as in reactions with energetic particles in nature or in particle accelerators. Muons which are counterparts of electrons but 207 times heavier were first discovered when extraterrestrial radiation hit atoms in the earth's atmosphere and with the extra energy created muons. Some of these survived to be detected by scientific instruments on the surface of earth. The particles made or partly made by these quarks quickly decay into the quarks or particles of the quarks made of the first family of quarks especially protons and neutrons in a very short time. Atoms have been made and maintined for a short time, about 2 millonths of a second where muons take the place of electrons and these are called muonic atoms and are an example of exotic atoms. Theoretically atoms could be made with any combination or muons and electrons or protons, neutrons or particles with strange or charm quarks but they are actually now difficult or impossible to build before these particles decay but when the curse of creation from man's sin in the garden of Eden is removed in the Millennial Kingdom perhaps radioactivity will be altered by God in a way that would permit these particles and exotic atoms to last long enough to have practical or commercial applications. I think this is even more likely to happen when God makes all things new in the new heavens and new earth in eternity. The muon neutrino is like the electron neutrino completely stable but also like the electron neutrino and for the same reasons doesn't react very much with matter.
| Quarks | Quark Charge | Leptons | Lepton Charge |
| Bottom Quark | -1/3 | Tau Particle | -1 |
| Top Quark | +2/3 | Tau Neutrino | 0 |
The quarks and Tau Particle are similiar to their counterparts in the first two families of matter but are all heavier and have shorter lifetimes with none of them yet known to exist in nature but only when produced in particle accelerators but could exist momentarily in extremely high energy areas in the universe such as around supernova, black holes, gamma ray bursts or active galaxies. The Tau Neutrino is also like the other neutrinos fully stable but doesn't react with matter for the same reasons. Particles made of this family of matter could also be more stable and possibly have practical uses in society in the Millenial reign of Jesus Christ or in the New Heavens or New Earth in God's reign in eternity. Physicists haven't found and do not expect to find any further families of matter in the universe based on the general physical properties and constants of the universe. 3 families and divisions into thirds of a charge could be evidence from God and the Divine Trinity of his creation of the universe and its physical laws. An update about subatomic particles is that a main discovery by the Large Hadron Collider in Europe with the European group CERN is that subatomic particles with not 2 or 3 quarks or anti-quarks but ones with 4 or 5 quarks have now been found in 2016 and possibly in 2015. These particles are still however composed of the same six quarks or perhaps anti-quarks as the traditional subatomic particles formed from 2 or 3 quarks or anti-quarks.
Although I have mentioned the leptons such as the electron, muon and neutrinos and the protons such as the neutron and proton that are composed of three quarks and are called "baryons" by physicists, there are other particles that have been produced in accelerators and that either have been observed in special conditions or could occur in special conditions naturally. Some of these particles are called mesons and are comprised of a quark and a anti-quark or antimatter quark. An example of this is the pi meson. These mesons could have charges of 0 if the quark and antiquark have charges of the same (and opposite) magnitude, or of +1, or -1 . Of course there are also antiparticles one of which the positron or anti-electron that has made its way into commercial applications such as the medical PET or positron electron tomography scanner. There are also antiprotons, antineutrons and antimatter counterparts of all the other normal matter particles. These are comprise of antiquarks which have opposite charges of the normal charges but of the same amount. The most complex piece of antimatter that has produced so far so far as I know is antihyrdogen with an antiproton with a positron in orbit around it. Although this or other antimatter counterparts of stable matter made of protons, neutrons electrons should be stable from radioactive decay like these types of normal matter, since we live in a universe primarily composed of matter, certainly in our immediate neighbourhood, it is most difficult to contain especially neutral antimatter like antiatoms because when it contacts the walls of any matter container the antimatter will react catastrophically with the matter of the walls of the container and annihilate both the antimatter and some of the container in a burst of energy. Although antimatter reactions are much more efficient than nuclear reactions this difficulty controlling the reaction of antimatter with matter presents a serious problem in practice.
So far as is known to modern science there are only four basic forces of nature or creation. They are the strong nuclear force that holds quarks together in subatomic particles together or the particles in the nuclei of atoms together with a carrier called gluons, the weak nuclear force that is responsible for radioactivity, electromagnetism that is responsible for electricity and magnetism and visible light, radio waves, heat or infrared radiation and much other radiation we are aware of and has as its carrier the photon or particle or quanta of light and gravity. Gravity is thought to have a carrier or quanta called a graviton and be spread from strong gravitational fields like that involving black holes by gravity waves but these have so far not been observed although there are instruments searching for them now and more powerful ones are planned soon. Update is that the US gravitational wave detection facility LIGO has detected three incidents of gravitational waves and just recently detected a fourth together with the newly operating gravitation wave observatory VIRGO in Italy. All these incidents were of pairs of supermassive black holes with with masses between 15 and 40 solar masses spiraling into each other and finally merging into a bigger black hole. In each of these incidents the final coalescing gave off about 1 or a couple solar masses of energy which was turned largely into the energy of the gravitational waves according to Einstein's equation E=mc2. It is hoped these observatories can soon also detect pairs of spiraling in to each other and coalescing neutron star pairs that would more likely give off some electromagnetic radiation that could help scientists associate electromagnetic astonomical sources with gravatiational wave astronomical sources and help astronomers learn more about gravitational waves and the objects that produce them. Finding associated electromagnetic waves could also better help astronomers identify the more specific locations of gravitation wave source astronomical objects. One of the reasons for appeal of some versions of so-called string theory or super-string theory is that it would enable a Theory of Everything (TOE) that could unite gravity including gravitons the quanta of gravity with the three other main forces of creation that is electromagnetism and its quanta photons, the weak nuclear force and its quanta W or Z bosons and the strong nuclear force and its carriers or quanta which I don't believe have been found yet and could still require higher energies than available with man-made accelerators.
The fields of electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force have been united briefly at the higher energies in accelerators to create particles that carry this united force called electroweak in carriers called W and Z particles but that is so far as far as physicists have proceeded in their dream to unite all the forces of nature. Gravity is by the weakest force of all but because the strong and weak nuclear force only act over distances similiar to an atom and electromagetism has positive and negative charges that cancel out even though this force can act over astronomical distances, gravity still has a great effect in the universe because it can act over any distance and it only has attraction between different objects. It is not well understood even by physicists what causes gravity but they hope to soon understand it better if they succeed in unambiguously producing heavy particles called Higgs particles that could explain why particles have their given masses. These particles could be clearly detected by an accelerator now under construction in Europe that is expected to begin operation in Fall 2007.
There was an announcement in February 2016 that the LIGO joint facility in Louisiana and Washington states had detected a very strong burst of gravitational waves in September 2015 when it was just being tested for regular operations at a new higher sensitivity. (The scientists felt it was necessary to wait unti this February to make the announcement to check if the signal was from something else including many other possible much less dramatic earthbound sources of interference. Having both instruments hundreds of miles across detect the same signal limits the possibility the signals are produced from local earthly sources.) As it turns out the event that produced this signal was from about 1.3 billion light years away from the final stage of two massive black holes spiraling into each other to produce one larger black hole. Originally these two black holes were about 30 and 36 solar masses and each about 100 kilometers across. Just before they joined as one larger black hole they were spiraling into each other at about 1/2 the speed of light which is about 186,000 miles per second or just under 300,000 kilometers per second. Just when they contacted each other and started to become one larger black hole they gave off energy in the form of gravitational waves equivalent to turning 3 solar masses of material into pure energy according to Einstein's famous equation E=mc**2. This was all predicted by Einstein in his theory of relativity published in 1916 but he didn't believe black holes existed and he also didn't think gravitational waves would ever be detected so this makes their detection announced this month that much more remarkable. Scientists have been looking for gravitational waves for a couple decades now but likely didn't have sensitive enough equipment before. Scientists at LIGO hope they will be able to soon announce other gravitational wave producing events and could already have recorded another event which they haven't confirmed yet. LIGO scientists said the event likely occurred in the southern hemisphere but unfortunatley they can't yet have clearer resolution to narrow the location of the event down to anything smaller than 400 times the area in the sky of the full Moon. Later this year a European facility for detecting gravitational waves called VIRGO is supposed to open in Italy and then soon after that other gravitational wave observatories in India and Japan. If all these in the next couple years also open and work successfully it will certainly allow scientists to more specifically locate the position of any future sources of gravitational waves. One significance of this and hopefully soon future other detections of gravitational waves is that it opens a new window of the universe to see especially particularly violent or energetic events that can't be seen as easily with existing detectors of different types of electomagnetic waves such as visible light, different types of radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet light, x-rays or gamma rays. These gravitational waves also can come right from the inside of black holes or exploding stars or the early universe and go through interstellar dust or other obstacles to some electromagnetic radiation. Finding these and perhaps other gravitational waves could help scientists eventually find the hypothetical particle or basic wave of gravity called a graviton corresponding to the wave/particle of electromagnetism called a photon. From a biblical Christian perspective these gravitational waves give further demonstration of God's glory, wisdom and power in His created universe that He shows to hopefully persuade more people to trust in Him and also come into a personal relationship with His through His Son Jesus Christ who died for us and our sins and also showed some power in rising from the dead partly by His own power.
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. Psalm 19:1-2
Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Romans 1:19-20
In early July 2012 there was a major announcement at the European Nuclear Organazation CERN that they had with the data collected in the Large Hadron Collider up to that point as well as the data at the American Fermilab that gives about only a 1 in a million chance that the signal they were receiving at about 125 to 126 Giga or billion electron volts was just by chance. This energy range is a prime range predicted for the Higgs particle. There are some differences in the decay chains in this particle that was seen compared to what is generally predicted for the Higgs particle but the data is generally consistant with a standard model Higgs particle. The Higgs particle was predicted since the 1960s and is the basic part of the so-called standard particle that explains why all subatomic particles including the proton, neutron and electron have mass. The Higgs particle is associated with the Higgs field that is thought to occur throughout space and through which all particles move and which gives them mass. IF it wasn't for this Higgs field and associated particle all particles would travel at the speed of light and have no mass like the photon or light particle does. The Higgs particle could also be part of what God's word means when it says in Colossians 1 that the Lord Jesus Christ is before all things and by him all things consist (hold together).
In November 2012 further confirmatino of the Higgs particle was announced. This was carried on the web sites Live Science, space.com and others. According to the article on Live Science, the further data give more indication that the Higgs like particle is indeed the standard Higgs particle which means it probably doesn't point to any more exotic physics like supersymmetry, dark matter or dark energy as some had hoped. A main reason for saying it is the standard Higgs particle is that the values for the spin and parity of this Higgs like particle were measured with values consistant with those for a standard Higgs particle. Spin is roughly the direction that the particle is oriented in space. Since this particle is measured with no preferential direction in space it has a spin of 0 which is consistant with a standard Higgs particle. The value of parity which can be thought of as the particle's handedness (left or right) is also consistant with a standard Higgs particle. Again the Higgs particle can be thought of as a key particle in God's creation at the minute level especially why many particles have mass and don't travel at the speed of light.
It is important to note that Jesus Christ is spoken in this passage not only as the one through whom God created all things invisible and visible including elementary particles and the laws of physics but that it is also through Jesus as these things "consist" or hold together. The primary name for the strong nuclear force by which quarks hold together and protons and neutrons hold together in the nuclei of atoms are called "gluons" which carries the same idea of consisting or holding together. Although not related by the term as much this maintaining all things to consist could also mean God through Jesus holding all things together by gravity on a larger scale as well.
Who (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; Colossians 1:15-19
The apostle Peter or other people of the 1st century would not know any scientific details of the nuclear realm or nuclear reactions so they would have to describe this phenomena in general terms in ways they could relate to. However the heavens passing away with a great noise and the elements melting with fervent heat are each consistant with the extremely violent and energetic nuclear reactions and this could be realized if God through His Son Jesus Christ stops his action of maintaining or holding together the universe at the nuclear or subatomic level as is he is upholding now and maintaining stability as in Colossians 1. In verse 12 the extra detail is provided that the heavens shall be on fire when the elements melt with fervent heat. All this dissolving of the elements and the heavens passing away although probably sounding terrifying to many still has a good purpose. This is because this current earth is tainted with human sin and displeasing to God and the heavens are tainted with demonic sin and perhaps of humans involved with the occult in such things as "astral projection" in which through occult experiences people project their spirits into the heavens with help with spirit guides or familiar spirits. These things would taint also the heavens with sin and make them displeasing to God. However for believers and God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the holy angels we look forward to a new heavens and a new earth that won't be tainted by sin and will have God's righteousness never to be tainted by sin again. This destruction of the current earth and heavens and the creating of the new earth and heavens will take place at the end of the 1000 year Messianic Age and the beginning of eternity. These new heavens could also be more habitable for humans and life than the current heavens that we know in which we have yet to find any other definite signs of life especially intelligent life or places that could support this life. However if we detect extrasolar planets of comparable mass and temperature we might detect signs of plant or other non-intelligent life soon. The scripture reference in 2 Peter 3 of God probably using nuclear reactions and disassociation to destroy this current earth and heavens to prepare for the new earth and new heavens is as follows:
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. 2 Peter 3:10-13
For more information, comments question or advice contact Doug at Contact Spirit and Truth Ministries
The Starry Heavens