what is the origin of heavier particles?
97241
Supernovae throw off some heavy crap when a star explodes.\n\nTake a look at the following link.  The graphe shows that iron is a special element.  When you fuse lighter elements, you release energy, and when you let heavier elements decay, you get energy.  But iron is going nowhere.  So a star starts out with lighter elements, which fuse and create heavier elements.  The more the sun uses up the small elements, the denser the core gets, and the more rapidly it fuses in the core.  Eventually, when most of the elements are used up, you'll have the core collapse and throw off the outer layers in a massive thermonuclear explosion.  The remaining material will mostly be iron, and the star will glow white-hot as a white dwarf for many years, until it evenbtually cools off and goes dark.  But some heavier elements will be thrown off by the explosion, including some that, in the rapid collapse, jumped the iron gap and absorbed energy from the nuclear explosion to become heavier than iron.  These heavier things will decay over time, releasing energy by fusion.
27684
Protons, neutrons, and electrons.
609227
I'm anxious to hear if any scientists have an answer to this question.  To me, it sounds like you're asking "Who initiated the Big Bang?" or "Why does gravity cause matter to be attracted to other matter?"  It seems to me like the question of "Why?" neutrons have neutral charges is kind of a God question.
439626
Most of the naturally occuring stuff comes from unstable atoms.  When the balance between protrons and neutrons is out of whack, the atom will fly apart.  Depending on the atom, it will break apart in one of 3 ways, it will emit an electron (beta decay), part of the nucleus (alpha) or throw off an electromagnetic wave (gamma). \nGamma also commonly comes from high energy particle hitting the atmosphere and shattering atoms.  The interaction releases a shower of other particles some of which release gamma.  It's nothing to worry about as we evolved under these conditions and our bodies are build to handle it.
1162887
Silicon was not formed directly after the big bang.  After the big bang, pretty much the only material in the universe was Hydrogen.  This Hydrogen coalesced into stars and began to fuse into heavier and heavier elements.  Eventually, heavy enough nuclei were fused together to form Silicon.\nThe vast majority of all observable matter in the universe is still in the form of Hydrogen, the heavier the nuclei, the harder it is the produce with in a star and the rarer it is in the universe.
499389
According to the standard model (which has proven correct MANY times) atoms are made up of neutrons and protons and are circled by electrons in their basic form. Neutrons and protons are both baryons (which are types of hadrons) and are composed of quarks. Quarks are fundamental particles (not composite) just like the electron. They are known as point particles as well.\n\nTheories are that these point particles are in fact strings (string theory) oscillating at different frequencies etc, but that is still disputed.
1168125
Elements heavier than iron are produced in two ways:\n\nActually, they are ONLY produced in supernovae.  You need a huge excess of energy around because fusion of atoms into atoms heavier than iron is an endothermic reaction.  \n\nBurbridge, Burbridge, Fowler and Hoyle published the DEFINITIVE paper that illustrated why we observe elements in the proportions we do.  They used the then new understanding of nuclear chemistry (the paper published in 1957) and an estimate of energy and nucleon density in supernova explosions to reproduce the observed proportions of heavy elements.  \n\nBelow I link to a nice wiki article that describes the history of answering your question.
335040
It is hard to explain here. \n\nIt is a hypothetical particle predicted by standard model of particle physics. And it was originally predicted by Peter Higgs.
901148
Hydrogen came about through a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis.  In the first three minutes of the universe's existence, hydrogen, helium, and trace amounts of lithium and beryllium came into existence.  Heavier elements formed only through fusion inside stars, much later.
38608
At first, scientists thought the atom was the smallest possible particle. Then they thought the electron, proton and neutron were the smallest. Now we have the quarks and other basic particles.\n\nAlthough they haven't discovered if quarks are made up of even smaller particles, I will guess that in a few years, scientists will discover that they are made of something smaller yet.
721773
Yes, it does. A negatively charged object is heavier than a positive one. However, this difference is amazingly small that it's hard to even comprehend let alone measure.\n\nEDIT: To the guy below me, although the positron is a recognised particle they do not magically appear to replace a lost electron - a positive object is lighter. See link for a workthrough and proof.
184874
All the fundamental particles are thought of as having no size.  They are all point particles as far as we know.  In reality they probably are all made up of something else...but we haven't been able to probe deep enough to know what that would be.\n\nSo, they are are smallest: quarks, leptons (electrons, neutrinos), and bosons (photon, gluons, W/Z, graviton), and more?
1053993
That question cannot be answered with the limited amount of information provided.  However,  if you consider the speed of the particles...then heat is the answer.  Considering anything else requires more information.
52498
Lighter elements (like hydrogen and helium) have been present since the beginning of time, and we see them largely in stars undergoing fission and fusion processes.  It is THESE processes (combustion of hydrogen and helium in a star) that CREATE heavier elements.\n\nThis process takes time.  We can only get elements up through iron before we need suns to take over and start crafting heavier ones.  That is why we see predominantly helium and hydrogen... it takes a while to make the rest.
319061
electron\nThe electron is a lightweight fundamental subatomic particle that carries a negative electric charge. The electron is a spin-1/2 lepton, does not participate in strong interactions and has no substructure. Together with atomic nuclei, electrons make up atoms; they are responsible for chemical bonding. The flow of electricity in solid conductors is primarily due to the movement of electrons.\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron\n\nThe electron, denoted  is a fundamental particle with negative electric charge that is found arranged in quantum mechanical orbits about neutral atoms. The electron is a lepton, and therefore has lepton number 1. The antiparticle of the electron is called the positron. \n\nThe electron mass is  kg, and the electron charge , where  \nhttp://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/Electron.html
505249
no.its the force produced due to the movement of other particles(electrons).so..
42903
Particles called W and Z bosons, which are similar to photons, except for having very large masses (about 80 times heavier than protons)\n\nThe large mass of these particles makes them hard to create out of the vacuum, thus they come into existence much less frequently than the massless photons.