The Standard Model of Particle Physics has three different types of particles – quarks, leptons and bosons. We have covered the first two types i.e. quarks and leptons. So, today let’s learn about bosons.
Bosons are the force carrying particles. There are five different types of bosons known to us – photon (carrier of electromagnetic force), gluon (carrier of nuclear strong force), W and Z bosons (carrier of weak nuclear force) and Higgs bosons (the particle responsible for the mass of elementary particle). Here, I said specifically that the Higgs boson is responsible for the mass of elementary particles. It is because the mass of bigger objects do not only come from Higgs boson. I will explain why in an upcoming blog.
Photon is neutral, has no mass and can travel at the speed of light. It carries the electromagnetic force. Electrons interact via exchanging photons. All charged objects/particles interact by exchanging photons. If you really want to know this process of exchanging photon, you can watch this video or wait for my upcoming blog.
Now, comes the gluon. Gluon is the particle carrying the strong nuclear force. It has no mass, no charge and can travel at the speed of light. But it has colours/flavours – three to be specific. I won’t go deep into this topic right now. You can watch the video if you want to learn more. Quarks are bound together by gluons.
The carrier of weak nuclear force are W and Z bosons. Z boson is neutral while W boson has a charge i.e. W+ and W-. Both of them have mass. These bosons are responsible for beta decay. Also, when matter and antimatter annihilate each other they may produce a Z boson instead of a photon.
Lastly, the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson gives mass to the elementary particles like quarks, leptons and some bosons like W and Z bosons. A particle gains mass by interacting with the Higgs boson. Less interaction means less mass while more interaction means more mass. No interaction means no mass like photon and gluon. Also, there is a clear misunderstanding that Higgs boson gives us all our mass. It is not true or at least not the whole story. I will explain why in my next blog.
Above are all bosons we have learnt, known and verified with experiments. Though the Standard Model of Particle Physics explains the three forces out of four fundamental forces, gravity is not explained. Also, the reason why quantum gravity is a huge problem is because gravity is so ridiculously, extremely weak about 10^-38 times weaker than the strong nuclear force. So, even with our flagship tools, we cannot detect it even if exists a particle carrying gravity.
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