Word: gluon
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...characteristics of the W and Z particles. Their theory was experimentally confirmed when a team led by Carlo Rubbia discovered the W and Z particles at the CERN accelerator near Geneva. In 1979 physicists working with an accelerator in West Germany found experimental evidence for the existence of the gluon, the strong-force carrier. Most physicists believed that a theory called quantum chromodynamics, which explains the strong force, would eventually be encompassed with the electroweak theory under one grand unified theory...
Physicists have long known that the photon, or light particle, was the carrier of electromagnetism. In 1979 in Hamburg, West Germany, they discovered the gluon, which conveys the strong force. This year CERN scored its crowning achievement by confirming the existence of three particles, the W+, W-and Z°, known collectively as intermediate vector bosons. They were predicted to be the agency of the weak force. That feat was a coup for a resurgent European physics community struggling to get back on its feet after World War II. It also irritated American scientists, who had regarded themselves...
What caused the new optimism was a tiny, ephemeral bit of matter that has neither mass nor charge. Known whimsically as the gluon (pronounced glue-on), it is believed to carry the so-called strong force, which helps bind together the other tiny particles-some 200 at last count-that make up the minuscule world of the atomic nucleus. When physicists first postulated the sticky little gluons more than five years ago, they were only theoretical concepts: no one knew whether they really existed outside their equations or were just some more scribblings on the blackboard...
...this time the physicists saw three jets: as they interpreted the results, two were from a quark and its antimatter equivalent, the antiquark; the third apparently from a gluon...
...this was highly exciting news to the nearly 600 physicists from 38 countries gathered at the Fermi accelerator. If gluons really exist, they are the first strong proof of an esoteric yet extremely important new physical theory called quantum chromo dynamics, or QCD. Although more experimental work will be necessary to establish the existence of gluons, already some bold theorists are using QCD in an ambitious attempt to succeed by other means where Einstein failed. That could eventually mean a union of all four of nature's basic forces -gravitation, electromagnetism and the nuclear strong and weak forces. Predicted...
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