Reality → Energy → Particles → Standard model
High-energy particle collisions produce a firework of new particles, most of which are extremely short-lived. At the speed of light, a particle travels 3 picometer, or 3000 times the diameter of a proton, in only 10-20 second. 'Virtual particles' are too short-lived for detection, but are assumed to exist based on conservation laws and the concept of particle creation and annihilation. The collisions also show that all particles have their antiparticle, which has the same mass and spin as the normal particle but opposite electrical charge. Particles and antiparticles always occur as pairs that annihilate each other in a collision, while energy and momentum are conserved. Particles come in different ‘flavors’, ‘colors’, and 'generations’. The standard model reduces the 'zoo' of composite particles created in high-energy particle colliders to relatively few elementary particles grouped in a table that is organized by physical properties and symmetry and whose scientific impact may be compared to the periodic table of elements. The standard model groups elementary particles into fermions, particles that make up matter, and bosons, particles that mediate the fundamental forces by which the fermions interact. Basically, the model identifies 16 elementary particles that are grouped into two classes of fermions and one class of bosons. The first class of fermions is made up of 6 quarks, up and down quark of the first generation and their equivalents in two more generations (or masses) [1] . Similarly, the second class of fermions is made up of 6 leptons (electron and neutrino in three generations), matter-building elementary particles that unlike quarks do not participate in the strong interaction. The class of bosons comprises 4 force-mediating bosons: the photon (mediating the electromagnetic force), the gluon (mediating the strong force), and the W and Z bosons mediating the weak force. In addition, the long sought mass-mediating Higgs boson has been discovered in 2012.