What is the smallest thing in existence? What is the largest?

Yo’ Junk and Yo’ Mama!

Galaxies would be the largest structures in existance, while quarks are the smallest particle we know of so far.

Fun song about quarks.

Neutrinos are much smaller than quarks, and of the three varieties of neutrinos, the electron neutrino has the least mass (1/5000th the mass of the lightest quark).

The largest “thing” depends on what your criteria for “thingness” is. Since every bit of matter in the universe influences every other bit of matter, the entire universe could be seen as “a thing”.

The smallest: the String.
The biggest: the 11 dimensional Hyperverse.

That was easy

@ragingloli Seen both of those. Meh

Largest: My ego
Smallest: Sadly, my penis

Actually, @ragingloli is correct, if you subscribe to M-theory.

@AstroChuck XD

sorry to hear that @AstroChuck

@ragingloli Has it.

@AstroChuck Lol!

So, are we talking about verified objects, or theorized ones?

@thorninmud I figure verified, with a dash of paprika and theorized

Elementary particles such as electrons and quarks appear to be point-like in extent, so they all qualify as “smallest” by appearing to have no size at all, though some have a smaller mass than others. The strings of string theory are hypothetical, hardly qualifying as “in existence.”

Photons have zero mass, followed with electron neutrinos with possibly zero mass. The biggest thing by mass would be the multiverse, or if that doesn’t exist, the universe. The most massive non-abstract objects would be supermassive black holes. VY Canis Majoris is the largest star known.

Photons aren’t considered a “component of matter”, though.

Then hydrogen atoms.

@PhiNotPi What about the protons, neutrons and electrons? thoe are obviously smaller.

Then the electron, which is even smaller than the up quark, the lightest of all quarks. I thought that @thorninmud‘s comment meant that subatomic particles where excluded, in which case the smallest atom would be hydrogen.

@PhiNotPi Photons are force-carrying particles, so they aren’t building blocks of matter. In the realm of actually confirmed sub-atomic particles, only quarks and leptons have been identified as the basic building blocks of matter. Leptons include electrons, muons, taus, and the three varieties of neutrinos. The electron neutrino is the smallest of all of these.

Super tiny non-confirmed sub-particles fitting into one Planck length.

And galactic superclusters are the largest known objects in our universe.