The aim of particle physics is to understand what everything’s made of, and how everything sticks together. By everything I mean me and you, the Earth, the Sun, the 100 billion suns in our galaxy and the 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Absolutely everything.

Cox frames particle physics as a universal, unifying inquiry: it asks both what matter is (its fundamental constituents) and why stable structures exist (the forces and interactions that bind particles into atoms, planets, stars, and galaxies). By escalating from “me and you” to the observable universe, he emphasizes continuity between everyday experience and the deepest physical laws—suggesting that the same underlying rules govern the smallest scales and the largest cosmic structures. The repetition of “everything” functions rhetorically to widen the listener’s sense of scope and to convey awe, while also underscoring particle physics’ ambition to provide a foundational description of nature.