Experimental Evidence

The experimental tools are: detectors and accelerators.

Detectors detect the presence of particles and measure one or more of their properties. They allow physicists to reconstruct the "event" triggered by the collision of particles. An "event" is what occurs when two particles collide or a single particle decays.

Accelerators are machines used to accelerate particles to high energies (high speeds). They are used like gigantic "microscopes," allowing us to study very small structures by probing them with high-energy particles.

Some of the largest accelerators in the world are at:

SLAC Fermilab CERN Brookhaven Cornell DESY KEK IHEP/China