Matter vs. Force: Why There Are Exactly Two Types of Particles

Beneath the richness of our world lies a pristine simplicity. Everything is made of a set of just 17 fundamental particles, and those particles, though they may differ by mass or charge, come in just two basic types. Each is either a “boson” or a “fermion.” The physicist Paul Dirac coined both terms in a speech in 1945, naming the two particle kingdoms after physicists who helped elucidate their…

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