alt Hacker NewsYou 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.
Replies
To me that raises the opposite question, why are there so few fields? (Compared to what I'd imagine, infinite)
[Edit: I suppose I'm imagining waves or frequencies of waves, rather than fields, hence why in my imagination there would be an infinite variety]
> They're manifestations of fields.
Or wave. Everything is a quantum wave.
https://www.vlatkovedral.com/everything-in-the-universe-is-a...
> 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
Definitely. It's rather strange that the OP article doesn't even mention the word "field". It seems that people in general have a hard time letting go of the idea of particles as fundamental.
A good overview of this is "There are no particles, there are only fields" (https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4616) by physics prof Art Hobson.
Fields collapse the zoo described in the article significantly, because particles and antiparticles arise from the same field, and similarly, spin, polarization, and helicity are properties of the same field. Taking this into account, the 118 particles number that the article reaches at one point drops to 37 fields.
[dead]
But of course one can then question why are there exactly N different types of fields, with their specific types of interaction (at least in our universe)? Why should we suppose that this is the most fundamental description of reality, rather than being emergent from something else?