You don't have to wonder, because they are. They're manifestations of fields.

I think it is a reasonable answer to tell people "if you're looking for the short list of simplest things, the number of types of fields there are is probably what you're looking for".

That doesn't invalidate this question in general, though the number of different answers from people looking at the same thing suggests it may be underspecified.

That's what the various string theory proponents start from. There's "too many" different subatomic particles, so there surely must be something smaller that they're composed of?

Even if we use "wave photon" and "particle photon" alternatively, they are only convenient ways of talking about the behavior of the "photon field". The same way when we say "it is raining" we don't mean there is an "it" that "rains" we should try to avoid giving too much litteral meaning to these descriptions.

That said, I get it is difficult, especially because we are using everyday language to talk about very-much-not-everyday stuff. We all needental hooks to anchor new knowledge and most of our intuition comes from the classical (not-quantum) world around us.

As a physicist, I feel the art is in learning when to use what description, what Sean Carrol calls "poetic naturalism".

Even though "particle photon" and "wave photon" are used alternatively, they are just convenient ways of talking about the behavior of the same "photon field". The same way when we say "it is raining" we don't mean that there is a "it" that "rains", we should try avoid taking these descriptions too literally.

That being said, is difficult because we are using language to describe very-much-not-everyday stuff. We all need mental hooks to anchor new knowledge and most of our intuition is based on the classical (not-quantum) world aroud us.

> I have to wonder if all these particles are somehow manifestations of a simpler thing

Yes, theorists have been working on a similar idea for decades.

> the “wave photon” and the “particle photon” seemed like possibly different things?

No. Wave vs particle is just a different description of the same thing.

Unified field theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_field_theory

> I have to wonder if all these particles are somehow manifestations of a simpler thing.

Someone else already mentioned that yes, they're manifestations of quantum fields. This is well established - the dominant theory of particle physics, the Standard Model, is a theory of quantum fields.

In that context, a particle is simply the smallest excitation of a quantum field that can be detected. Fields can be "excited" (fluctuate) in many different ways, and the OP article is interpreting each one of those as a different type of particle. It's misleading.