Preons - Because Subatomic Physics Wasn't Complicated Enough

There was a time when discovering a new particle would win you the Nobel prize -
these days you get a $50 gift voucher and told to stop causing trouble. The Greeks
figured that the smallest possible unit was the atom - named for their word for 'uncuttable'.
This got cut up into a nucleus and orbiting electrons, then we smashed the nucleus up into
nucleons (protons and neutrons), the electron into leptons, and just because there weren't
quite enough different colours on the "Sub-atomic particles chart" yet we figured out how
to break the nucleons and other hadrons into quarks.

So it's a combination of excitement and a muttered sigh of "again?" that greets the predictions
of researchers of Luleå University of Sweden. Fredrik Sandin and Johan Hansson support the
idea that quarks themselves (previous holders of "that's it, these are the smallest pieces for
real this time" award) are in fact made up of smaller preon particles. Preon models have been
popular as early as the 1980s, after which they lost ground against the scientifically-sexier
superstring suppositions. Twenty years later and with no pesky 'validation' in sight, it seems
that people are once again interested in proving the preon.

Full article here:

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/12/preons---becaus.html