Physics is also called "high-energy physics" because many elementary particles do not occur naturally but are created only during high-energy collisions of other particles. Currently, the interactions of elementary particles and fields are described by the Standard Model. The model accounts for the 12 known particles of matter (quarks and leptons) that interact via the strong, weak, and electromagnetic fundamental forces. Dynamics are described in terms of matter particles exchanging gauge bosons (gluons, W and Z bosons, and photons, respectively). The Standard Model also predicts a particle known as the Higgs boson. In July 2012 CERN, the European laboratory for particle
Elementary particle of elementary particles by hypothesizing that each known particle associates with a "shadow" partner far more massive, although all such superpartners remain undiscovered. Meanwhile, an elementary boson mediating gravitation—the graviton—remains hypothetical. All elementary particles are—depending on their "spin"—either bosons or fermions. These are differentiated via the spin–statistics theorem of quantum statistics. Particles of "half-integer" spin exhibit Fermi–Dirac statistics and are fermions. Particles of "integer" spin, in other words full-integer, exhibit Bose–Einstein statistics and are bosons. In the Standard Model, elementary particles are represented for predictive utility as point particles. Though extremely successful, the Standard Model is limited to the microcosm