Building a Universe

Abstract

When Gell-Mann published his eightfold method he was not entirely satisfied with it. True, it was extremely helpful in grouping particles into families and it led to the prediction of the omega-minus particle. But it did not answer the question that was nagging most elementary particle theorists: Are all the recently discovered particles really elementary? Furthermore, Gell-Mann had skipped over the fundamental representation in setting up his theory—and he felt uneasy about it. After all, this was the representation from which all the others were derived; it had to have significance, yet it didn’t seem to relate to any of the known particles of nature.