What’s An Electron Composed Of?

If I were to ask what methane is composed of, you’d answer of carbon and hydrogen, even though methane, carbon and hydrogen aren’t remotely similar on either the micro or macro scale. If I ask what a diamond is composed of, you’d say carbon and in a sense carbon and diamonds are identical (even if a diamond isn’t exactly similar to coal or to graphite which are also carbon). But what is carbon composed of? Well I guess you’d say carbon, a carbon atom, was composed of neutrons, protons and electrons – the latter surrounding the former. But electrons, protons and neutrons are as alike as chalk and cheese when compared to carbon. Down the rabbit hole we now go.

So what are neutrons and protons composed of? Well it turns out that neutrons and protons aren’t fundamental but are in turn composed of up-quarks and down-quarks – and that’s where that buck stops. Now ask what’s an electron composed of? Well you couldn’t answer that question even though an electron HAS to be composed of something. After all, an electron has mass; an electron can do you a mischief (as in electrocution); and when an electron meets and greets a positron – well you get something in return – energy. Okay, so let’s hypothetically call what an electron is composed of, say “electronium”.

Now the question arises, are the other irreducible particles, like the before mentioned up and down quarks (and also neutrinos), also composed of “electronium” but with differing amounts of a separate and apart property – positive and negative electric charge – attached or tacked on? Or, does “electronium” contain of necessity an inherent property of electric charge and thus are up-quarks and down-quarks and neutrinos, all with differing values of electric charge, composed not of “electronium” but instead say of “up-quarkium” and “down-quarkium” and with respect to neutrinos “neutrinogen” each with their own inherent value of electric charge?

So, the base question now becomes, is there one fundamental substance at the most basic level (i.e. – electronium) with four various tack-on electric charge values, or four (or more) fundamental substances (“electronium” just one of the four) each with their own inherent electric charge value?

Perhaps the answer lies in the absurd but experimentally proven and therefore true fact that there are actually three generations of fundamental particles.* In addition to the humble electron, there’s the more massive muon and the even more massive tau, all with the exact same value of the electric charge as has the electron. That implies that electric charge is a tack-on since mass and electric charge aren’t inherently linked since electric charge doesn’t increase with increasing mass.

Another answer might lie with neutron decay. Since an isolated neutron fairly quickly decays into a proton, an electron and an anti-neutrino (which actually has no electric charge – a neutrino is kind of its own anti-particle), that implies that they are all constructed of one and the same singular fundamental substance (i.e. – electronium or whatever other name you care to call it, maybe even something akin to “peaches”, an alternative name for given by Trump for Trump’s border wall). The reverse side is that electrons are forced to join with protons to form neutrons in what’s called an extremely high gravity object termed a neutron star or pulsar. That implies that all are fundamentally made of the same stuff.

Addendum: If you accelerate an electron to ever increasing speeds, it will gain in mass according to Einstein’s Theories of Relativity. However, electric charge remains the same. So electric charge is independent of mass or composition.

*Including not only electrons but of the two varieties of quarks and those neutrinos too.