Top 10 Coolest Quantum Particles

Particles are all fascinating things, but which do you find the most interesting?

Vote. Or is your mouse in a superposition?

1. Higgs Boson

   The Higgs Boson is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics, first theorized in 1964 and discovered in 2012. It gives particles mass through the Higgs mechanism.

   The Higgs, as I'm sure you know, is responsible for mass existing in all other matter (with mass), and will lead to explanations of most of the concepts that we have only so far perceived. Pretty cool.

2. Positron

   The Positron is the antiparticle of the electron. It has the same mass as an electron but has a positive charge.

   Had to put my online namesake in somewhere. The discovery of these was evidence for antimatter, and experiments using them have been used for the creation of antihydrogen and for investigating the matter-antimatter anomaly.

3. Graviton

   The Graviton is a hypothetical elementary particle that mediates the force of gravity in a yet-to-be-quantized theory of gravity.

   Gravitons, if they can fit the standard model, may lead to a theory of quantum gravity, a relativistic holy grail.

4. Neutron

   The Neutron is a subatomic particle found in the nucleus of an atom. It has no net electric charge and is made up of quarks and gluons.

   What really gets me with neutrons is how they only differ from protons by one simple quark. They still have very different properties, with various explanations suggesting why the neutron is less stable. This fascinates me and might boggle certain minds.

5. Neutrino

   The Neutrino is an elementary particle with a very small mass and no electric charge. It interacts very weakly with matter and is very difficult to detect.

   Neutrinos are really cool particles, but I really like the Higgs Boson. Imagine if just one type of particle, for example, the electron, had a different mass. Then the universe would be different from how we know it. Or imagine if photons had masses.

   An oscillating particle that was thought to be massless but oscillates to appear so, and has previously unknown charge oscillations that may explain the matter-antimatter anomaly. Whoa.

   Travels at the speed of light through a vacuum, but it goes faster than light when passing through a medium because light slows down while neutrinos keep traveling at light's vacuum speed. Neutrinos can go through 100 light-years of solid steel without slowing down, according to the show Cosmos.

6. Top Quark

   The Top Quark is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics. It is the most massive of all known elementary particles and decays almost instantly.

   We know so little of it, but what we do know is brilliant. The smallest yet most energy-dense and unstable of the fundamental particles has so much to reveal.

7. Proton

   The Proton is a subatomic particle found in the nucleus of an atom. It has a positive electric charge and is made up of quarks and gluons.

   Whatever makes up the nucleus of an atom, I'm gonna like it.

8. Photon

   The Photon is a fundamental particle that is a carrier of the electromagnetic force and has no mass or electric charge.

   Sometimes light acts as a wave and other times as a particle.

9. Electron

   The Electron is an elementary particle with a negative electric charge. It is one of the fundamental particles that make up atoms.

   Come on, the electron is applied to almost anything and gave a lot in understanding atomic structure. Great thing, this.

10. Gluon

    The Gluon is a gauge boson that mediates the strong interaction between quarks. It is responsible for holding quarks together to form hadrons.

    The gauge boson for the strong nuclear force. It's more than just an exchange of energy, though. It's the extreme density of energy wells that drives the strong interaction, and that is quite a quirk.

The Newcomers
11. ?

    Hadron

    A composite particle made of quarks and gluons that interacts via the strong nuclear force, and includes protons, neutrons, and mesons.

12. ?

    Selectron

    The selectron is a hypothetical supersymmetric partner of the electron appearing in supersymmetry models. It would be a scalar particle differing from the electron by its spin while sharing its electric charge.

The Contenders

13. Muon

    The Muon is an elementary particle similar to the electron but with a greater mass. It is unstable and decays into an electron and two neutrinos.

    Muons, as heavy electrons, have played a significant role in evaluating energy differences in fundamental particles and in muonic atoms. I think they deserve more attention. So does the tau particle for the same reason.

14. Strange Quark

    The Strange Quark is a type of quark that is found in certain types of hadrons. It is named after the unusual behavior of strange particles in particle interactions.

    The strange quark is a strange customer. It leads to explanations of the low abundance of non-atomic hadrons and explains strangeness interactions.

15. Charm Quark

    The charm quark is an elementary particle in the Standard Model that carries a charge of positive two thirds. It is a second-generation quark and commonly appears in hadrons such as D mesons.

16. Kaon

    The Kaon is a type of meson consisting of a strange quark and either an up or down quark. It is involved in the weak interaction and is used to study CP violation.

17. Pion

    The Pion is a type of meson consisting of an up or down quark and an anti-up or anti-down quark. It is involved in the strong interaction and is used to study the strong nuclear force.

18. Photino

    The Photino is a hypothetical supersymmetric particle that is the superpartner of the photon and a candidate for dark matter.

19. Antiparticle

    The Antiparticle is a particle that has the same mass as its corresponding particle but has opposite electric charge and other quantum numbers.

    An antiparticle is a subatomic particle having the same mass as one of the particles of ordinary matter but with opposite electric charge and magnetic moment.

20. Tau

    The Tau is a lepton that is similar to the electron but is much heavier and decays into other particles.

21. Phonon

    The Phonon is a quasiparticle that represents a collective excitation of atoms or molecules in a solid.

22. Plasmon

    The Plasmon is a quasiparticle that represents a collective excitation of electrons in a solid or plasma.

23. Polaron

    The Polaron is a quasiparticle that represents a charged particle moving through a polar medium and creating a local distortion of the medium.

24. Tachyon

    The Tachyon is a hypothetical particle that is predicted to travel faster than light and has imaginary mass.

25. Magneton

    The Magneton is a unit of magnetic moment that is associated with a charged particle, such as an electron or proton.

26. Gluino

    The gluino is a hypothetical supersymmetric partner of the gluon predicted by supersymmetry theories. It is expected to be a color-octet fermion that would play a role in proposed extensions of quantum chromodynamics.