Top Ten Coolest Quantum Particles
Particles are all fascinating things, but which do you find the most interesting? Vote. Or is your mouse in a superposition?Had to put my online namesake in somewhere. The discovery of these was evidence for antimatter, and experiments with use of them have been used for creation of antihydrogen and for investigating the matter-antimatter anomaly.
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.
Gravitons, if they can fit the standard model, may lead to a theory of quantum gravity; a relativistic holy grail.
What really gets me with neutrons is how they only differ from protons by one simple quark. And they still have very different properties, with various explanations suggesting why the neutron is less stable that fascinate. If they don't boggle certain minds.
Neutrino's are really cool particles but I really like 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 knew it. Or image if photons had masses...
An oscillating particle that was thought to be massless but oscillates to appear so; plus has previously unknown charge oscillations which may explain the matter-antimatter anomaly. Whoa.
Travles at the speed of light through a vaccum but it goes faster than light when through a medium because light slows down but neutrinos keep on traveling at lights vaccum speed. Neutrinos can go through 100 lightyears of solid steel without slowing down according to the show cosmos.
Definitely deserve higher position.
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.
Whatever makes up the nucleus of an atom I'm gonna like it.
Sometimes light acts as a wave and other times a particle!
Come on, the electron is applied to almost anything, and gave a lot in understanding atomic structure. Great thing, this.
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.
Muons, as heavy electrons, have made great significance in evaluating energy differences in fundamental particles and in muonic atoms, so I think they deserve more attention. So does the tau particle for the same reason.
The strange quark is a strange customer. Leads to explain low abundance of non-atomic hadrons and explains strangeness interactions.
Antiparticle, subatomic particle having the same mass as one of the particles of ordinary matter but opposite electric charge and magnetic moment.
In physics, there is a speculative notion that if there were a black hole with the same mass, charge and angular momentum as an electron, it would share some of the properties of the electron. Most notably, Brandon Carter showed in 1968 that the magnetic moment of such an object would match that of an electron.