What Makes Up The Universe?
. Everything in the universe, from elementary particles and atoms to people, houses, and planets, can be classified into one of two categories: fermions or bosons . The behavior of a particle or group of particles, such as an atom or a house, determines whether it is a fermion or boson. The distinction between these two categories is not noticeable on the large scale of people or houses, but it has profound implications in the world of atoms and elementary particles. Fundamental particles are classified according to whether they are fermions or bosons. Fundamental fermions combine to form atoms and other more unusual particles, while fundamental bosons carry forces between particles and give particles mass. In 1925 Austrian-born American physicist Wolfgang Pauli formulated a rule of physics that helped define fermions. He suggested that no two electrons can have the same properties and locations. He proposed this exclusion principle to explain why all of the electrons in atoms have ...