Sections
Key Terms
Key Terms
- boson
- positive carrier particle of the weak nuclear force
- boson
- negative carrier particle of the weak nuclear force
- boson
- neutral carrier particle of the weak nuclear force
- annihilation
- the process of destruction that occurs when a particle and antiparticle interact
- antimatter
- matter constructed of antiparticles; antimatter shares most of the same properties of regular matter, with charge being the only difference between many particles and their antiparticle analogues
- baryon
- hadrons that always decay to another baryon
- Big Bang
- a gigantic explosion that threw out matter a few billion years ago
- bottom quark
- a quark flavor
- carrier particle
- a virtual particle exchanged in the transmission of a fundamental force
- charmed quark
- a quark flavor, which is the counterpart of the strange quark
- colliding beam
- head-on collisions between particles moving in opposite directions
- color
- a property of quarks the relates to their interactions through the strong force
- cyclotron
- accelerator that uses fixed-frequency alternating electric fields and fixed magnets to accelerate particles in a circular spiral path
- down quark
- the second lightest of all quarks
- Electroweak Epoch
- the stage before 10−11 back to 10−34 seconds after the Big Bang
- electroweak theory
- theory showing connections between EM and weak forces
- Feynman diagram
- a graph of time versus position that describes the exchange of virtual particles between subatomic particles
- flavor
- quark type
- gluons
- exchange particles of the nuclear strong force
- Grand Unification Epoch
- the time period from 10−43 to 10−34 seconds after the Big Bang, when Grand Unification Theory, in which all forces except gravity are identical, governed the universe
- Grand Unified Theory
- theory that shows unification of the strong and electroweak forces
- graviton
- hypothesized particle exchanged between two particles of mass, transmitting the gravitational force between them
- hadron
- particles composed of quarks that feel the strong and weak nuclear force
- Higgs boson
- a massive particle that provides mass to the weak bosons and provides validity to the theory that carrier particles are identical under certain circumstances
- Higgs field
- the field through which all fundamental particles travel that provides them varying mass through the transport of the Higgs boson
- Inflationary Epoch
- the rapid expansion of the universe by an incredible factor of 10−50 for the brief time from 10−35 to about 10−32 seconds
- lepton
- fundamental particles that do not feel the nuclear strong force
- meson
- hadrons that can decay to leptons and leave no hadrons
- pair production
- the creation of a particle and antiparticle, commonly an electron and positron, due to the annihilation of a photon
- particle physics
- the study of and the quest for those truly fundamental particles having no substructure
- pion
- particle exchanged between nucleons, transmitting the strong nuclear force between them
- Planck Epoch
- the earliest era of the universe, before 10–43 seconds after the Big Bang
- positron
- a particle of antimatter that has the properties of a positively charged electron
- quantum chromodynamics
- the theory of color interaction between quarks that leads to understanding of the nuclear strong force
- quantum electrodynamics
- the theory of electromagnetism on the particle scale
- quark
- an elementary particle and fundamental constituent of matter that is a substructure of hadrons
- Quark Era
- the time period from 10–11 to 10–6 seconds at which all four fundamental forces are separated and quarks begin to exit
- Standard Model
- an organization of fundamental particles and forces that is a result of quantum chromodynamics and electroweak theory
- strange quark
- the third lightest of all quarks
- superforce
- the unification of all four fundamental forces into one force
- synchrotron
- a version of a cyclotron in which the frequency of the alternating voltage and the magnetic field strength are increased as the beam particles are accelerated
- Theory of Everything
- the theory that shows unification of all four fundamental forces
- top quark
- a quark flavor
- up quark
- the lightest of all quarks
- weak nuclear force
- fundamental force responsible for particle decay