Trouble With Mesons

There has recently been concern among physicists with apparently anomalous behavior among  mesons. Mesons are sub-atomic particles and, as has recently been discovered, they decay, or is it oscillate, in an irregular fashion -- or or so I think it is said, though possibly it is that they vacillate.*

But quite frankly, I don't understand the business with particles. The other day some authority on the matter said that a particle is an avatar for a force. But what does that mean?

Not that I disbelieve in particles. I once made my own tiny cloud chamber out of a clear plastic beaker, some rubbing alcohol and a bit of dry ice (details here). In the cloud of vapor thus created within the beaker, there were things clearly to be seen, slowly milling around. These things, mesons apparently, were created, so the official explanation goes, by cosmic rays striking the upper atmosphere. Although it was not actually the particles I could see but their evolving tracks, wiggling slowly through the mist like ghostly caterpillars.

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* Actually, it seems that muons wobble. This may not seem a fact of great significance, except that the wobble apparently suggests the existence of a fifth fundamental force, and if that is correct it is surely a very big deal.