Physics · Curated list
Electron, Proton, Neutron and 27 more, ranked by how much of the world has written about each one.
Most written-about first. Each description summarises the particle's Wikipedia article, which its name links to.
1
Elementary particle with negative charge
A subatomic particle whose electric charge is minus one elementary charge. It is one of the elementary particles found in the matter the universe is made of.
Wikidata · Photo: Richard Parsons, CC BY-SA 3.0
2
Subatomic particle with positive charge
A stable subatomic particle, written p, H⁺ or ¹H⁺, carrying a positive electric charge of +1 e (one elementary charge). It is slightly lighter than a neutron and about 1836 times as heavy as an electron, a figure known as the proton-to-electron mass ratio.
3
Subatomic particle with no charge
A subatomic particle, written n or n⁰, with no electric charge and a mass a little greater than a proton's. James Chadwick discovered it in 1932; that discovery led to nuclear fission being found in 1938, to the first self-sustaining nuclear reactor and to the first nuclear weapon.
Wikidata · Photo: Jacek rybak, CC BY-SA 4.0
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4
Core of an atom composed of nucleons
The small, dense region of protons and neutrons at the centre of an atom. Ernest Rutherford discovered it in 1911 at the University of Manchester, building on the Geiger–Marsden gold foil experiment of 1909; once the neutron was discovered in 1932, Dmitri Ivanenko and Werner Heisenberg soon developed models of a nucleus made of protons and neutrons.
Wikidata · Photo: Pearson Scott Foresman, Public domain
5
Elementary particle or quantum of light
An elementary particle that carries the electromagnetic force and is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, a field that includes electromagnetic radiation such as radio waves and light. Photons have no mass and can travel at only one speed: the speed of light as measured in a vacuum.
Wikidata · Photo: 彭嘉傑 at Chinese Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
6
Subatomic particle having no substructure
In the Standard Model of particle physics, a subatomic particle not made of other particles, also called a fundamental particle. The Standard Model recognises seventeen different ones: twelve fermions and five bosons.
7
Elementary particle, fundamental constituent of matter
A kind of elementary particle and one of the basic building blocks of matter. Quarks join together into composite particles known as hadrons; the most stable hadrons, protons and neutrons, make up atomic nuclei.
Wikidata · Photo: Ranjithsiji, CC BY-SA 4.0
8
Elementary particle with extremely low mass
An elementary particle that interacts through gravity and the weak interaction. Its name reflects that it is electrically neutral and that its rest mass is so tiny (-ino) that for a long time it was believed to be zero.
9
Elementary particle involved with rest mass
Sometimes called the Higgs particle, an elementary particle of the Standard Model of particle physics that arises when the Higgs field, one of the fields of particle physics theory, is excited quantum-mechanically. In the Standard Model it is a massive scalar boson with zero spin, even (positive) parity, and neither electric nor color charge; it couples to the particles whose mass comes from their interactions with the Higgs field.
Wikidata · Photo: Lucas Taylor / CERN, CC BY-SA 3.0
10
Antiparticle of the electron
Also called the antielectron, the antiparticle of the electron: it has an electron's mass, a spin of 1/2 ħ and an electric charge of +1e.
Wikidata · Photo: Carl D. Anderson (1905–1991), Public domain
12
Class of subatomic particle
A subatomic particle of particle physics whose spin quantum number is a whole number. Subatomic particles fall into two fundamental classes, bosons and fermions; fermions have a spin of half an odd integer.
Wikidata · Photo: TimothyRias, CC BY 3.0
13
14
15
Class of elementary particles
An elementary particle of particle physics with half-integer spin that takes no part in strong interactions. Leptons come in two main classes: charged ones, among them the electron, the muon and the tauon, and neutral ones, better known as neutrinos.
Wikidata · Photo: TimothyRias, CC BY 3.0
16
Elementary particle that mediates the strong force
A massless elementary particle that carries the strong interaction between quarks, serving as the particle exchanged in that interaction. Gluons are vector bosons without mass, which gives them a spin of 1.
Wikidata · Photo: user:MissMJ, CC BY 3.0
17
Hadron (subatomic particle) that is composed of three quarks
A composite subatomic particle of particle physics containing an odd number of valence quarks, usually three. Protons and neutrons are baryons; since baryons are built from quarks, they belong to the family of hadrons.
Subatomic particle; made of equal numbers of quarks and antiquarks
A hadronic subatomic particle of particle physics made of quarks and antiquarks in equal numbers, usually one of each, held together by the strong interaction. Being built from quarks, mesons have a real physical size: roughly one femtometre (10⁻¹⁵ m) across, which makes them about 0.6 times as big as a neutron or proton.
19
Subatomic particle
An elementary particle like the electron, with a spin of 1/2 ħ and an electric charge of −1 e, but far heavier. It is counted as a lepton.
Wikidata · Photo: Jino john1996, CC BY-SA 4.0
20
Hypothetical elementary particle that mediates gravity
The particle that, in theories of quantum gravity, would carry the force of gravity; it remains hypothetical. It would be a quantum of the energy carried by gravitational waves.
Wikidata · Photo: ParticlesAndMath, CC BY 4.0
Elementary subatomic particle with negative electric charge
An elementary particle like the electron, with a spin of 1/2 and a negative electric charge, also known as the tauon, the tau particle or the tau lepton. It is a lepton, as are the three neutrinos, the muon and the electron; and like every elementary particle of half-integer spin it has an antiparticle with the same spin and mass but the opposite charge.
22
Type of quark
Also called the u quark, the lightest quark, a kind of elementary particle and an important building block of matter. Together with the down quark it makes up the protons and neutrons of atomic nuclei.
Wikidata · Photo: user:MissMJ, CC BY 3.0
23
Elementary particles that are force carriers
A bosonic elementary particle of particle physics that carries force between elementary fermions. Elementary particles whose interactions a gauge theory describes act on one another by exchanging gauge bosons, usually virtual ones.
24
Type of quark
Also called the charmed quark or c quark, an elementary particle found in hadrons, the composite subatomic particles: in the J/psi meson, for example, and in the charmed baryons that particle accelerator collisions produce. Several bosons can decay into charm quarks, among them the Higgs boson and the W and Z bosons.
Wikidata · Photo: user:MissMJ, CC BY 3.0
25
Hypothetical faster-than-light particle
Also called a tachyonic particle, a hypothetical particle that always moves faster than light. Physicists hold that such particles cannot exist, since they would be at odds with the known laws of physics.
Wikidata · Photo: TxAlien at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
26
Subatomic particle; lightest meson
Also called a pi meson and named with the Greek letter pi, any of three subatomic particles of particle physics: π⁰, π⁺ and π⁻. Each is made of one quark and one antiquark, which makes it a meson.
Wikidata · Photo: No machine-readable author provided. Harp assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5
27
Type of quark
A kind of elementary particle and a major building block of matter. It is the second-lightest quark, and joins other quarks to form the composite particles called hadrons.
Wikidata · Photo: user:MissMJ, CC BY 3.0
28
Type of quark
The heaviest elementary particle yet observed. Its mass comes from how it couples to the Higgs field.
Wikidata · Photo: user:MissMJ, CC BY 3.0
29
Subatomic particle
Written p̄, the proton's antiparticle. Though stable, antiprotons usually live only briefly, because colliding with any proton annihilates both particles in a burst of energy.
Wikidata · Photo: en real life identity: SHA-1 commitment ba62ca25da3fee2f8f36c101994f571c151abee7, CC BY-SA 3.0
30
Type of quark
Also called the s quark, the third-lightest quark, a kind of elementary particle. Strange quarks occur in the subatomic particles called hadrons.
Wikidata · Photo: user:MissMJ, CC BY 3.0
Every Wikidata item that is a type of subatomic particle, or a family of them, and that has its own English Wikipedia article, ranked by the number of Wikimedia sites with a page about it — Wikipedia's language editions, mostly, and sister projects such as Wikiquote. That counts how many communities independently thought it worth describing, and nobody can buy a place on it. The top 30 are shown.
Fetched from Wikidata on 2026-09-25. Each description is this site's summary of the entry's Wikipedia article, which its name links to: the wording is ours, the facts are Wikipedia's, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. To correct an entry, correct it there; the next refresh carries the change.
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