HIDDeN Outreach

What is matter made of? There are some questions that human beings have tried to answer since the beginning of their history: Why are we there? What is the Universe? What is the meaning of life?... One of these compelling questions is: What is matter made of? What are we made of? Throughout history, scientists and philosophers have proposed different explanations, such as the possibility that everything we observe in nature is made of four basic elements (fire, air, water and earth). In the 5th century BC, the Greek philosopher Democritus was the first to suggest the idea that every kind of matter (a stone, a human being, an animal, a flower…) is composed of tiny, unbreakable and elementary building blocks that he called atoms.