Word: muons
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...their surprise, the scientists counted fewer than half the electron neutrinos anticipated. Reines speculates that they had changed flavors, or oscillated, turning into muon or tau neutrinos during their short journey. If such a switch had occurred, the neutrinos must have mass (since physics dictates that one kind of particle must have mass to turn into another). Said Reines: "The simple view [of the massless neutrino] does not square with experimental facts...
...pion was actually observed. Much had happened in the interim, not the least of which was the discovery of the muon in 1937, and of the "strange" particles in 1944, so named for their inexplicably long lifetimes. In the '50s, many more new particles were discovered. Suddenly, "the elementary particles" did not seem quite so elementary...
...carriers of mass can be further divided into leptons, which do not feel the "strong" force, and hadrons, which do. There are four leptons: the electron, the muon, the electron neutrino and the muon neutrino. There are hundreds of hadrons. The neutron and proton are both hadrons and so are subject to the paull of the "strong" force...
Indeed he was. The final assault on Saigon was code-named the Ho Chi Minh Campaign. When Saigon collapsed, it was promptly rechristened Ho Chi Minh city. In the streets of rejoicing Hanoi, the most frequently exchanged greeting was "Ho Chi Minh muon nam" (Long live Ho Chi Minh...
...Muon transmissions may point the way to a more dazzling form of communication. The large "zoo" of subatomic particles, as physicists call it, includes an even stranger will-o'-the-wisp called the neutrino: a virtually massless and chargeless bundle of energy. That tiny particle can pass through matter of any thickness, including the entire earth. Furthermore, regardless of how many neutrinos there might be in a beam, they would present no radiation hazard. Thus if a neutrino transmission and detection system could be developed, the elusive particle might prove to be an even better answer...