Word: quarks
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...isolation last week of a "lone" quark, a sub-atomic particle that scientists previously believed could not be isolated, sent shock waves through the typically placid world of particle physics...
...case for charm--or the fourth quark--became much firmer when it was realized that there was a serious flaw in the familiar three-quark [flavor] theory, which predicted that "strange" particles would sometimes decay in ways that they did not. In an almost magical way, the existence of the charmed quark prohibits these unwanted and unseen decays, and brings the theory into agreement with experiment. Thus did my recent [1970] collaborators, John Iliopoulos, Luciano Maiani and I justify another definition of charm as a magical device to avert evil...
More support for Glashow's work came in 1974 with the discovery of the J or psi particle at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. The particle was eventually interpreted as a combination of a charmed quark (c) and a charmed anti-quark (c*). But final confirmation came in May 1976, when the Stanford team, led by Gerson Goldhaber, found incontrovertible evidence that charmed particles exist...
What important physical questions remain unanswered? Glashow points to "quark confinement"--the fact that quarks, although an amazingly successful theoretical construct, have never been seen. A good explanation of their reclusive nature is desireable...
Glashow does not think about the social implications of his work, of which he believes there are none. In a 1974 lecture entitled "Something exciting Is Happening in Particle Physics" Glashow asked, "What are the implications of the charmed quark for--anything...