There is an amazing beauty and symmetry in nature. Think of snowflake, a daisy or a honeycomb. The shapes of these and all other natural objects depend on an underlying structure of matter. For centuries scientists have wondered what this structure might be. Their studies have led to a search for particles that are the smallest, simplest building blocks of matter, and for the forces that control their behavior. The particles are quarks and leptons; the forces are gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force and the strong force. Fermilab scientists are leading this international search to learn how the universe works.

When scientists study the subatomic particles and forces that bind them together, they also learn about the early history of the universe and how it began with the "Big Bang." When the universe was very young, atoms didn't exist, because it was too hot for them to form. The only form of matter was a sort of "primordial soup," consisting of the most basic particles, such as quarks and electrons. At Fermilab, scientists use the Tevatron to make the ingredients of primordial soup by smashing together protons and antiprotons at very high energies. The earlier we look in time, the fewer and more basic the particles become, and the fewer forces are needed to control their behavior. The laws of physics are valid in the whole universe and throughout the whole of time.

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Law 'n Order