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W boson
W boson
- A subatomic particle with positive electric charge that mediates the weak nuclear force. The W boson has a mass 160,000 times that of the electron. Unlike the other weak force mediator (the Z boson), the W boson changes particles it interacts with into other kinds of particles; for example, in beta-plus decay (a kind of beta decay ), an up quark in a proton decays into a down quark by emitting a W boson, changing the proton into a neutron. The W boson itself decays into a positron and an electron neutrino.
- See Table at subatomic particle
Example Sentences
The electromagnetic force is conveyed by the photon, the strong force by the gluon, and the weak force by particles called the W boson and Z boson.
The hint that the W boson might be extra-hefty came from an analysis of data from a particle detector called D0, which was fed by the now-defunct Tevatron collider at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
The remaining hopeful hints of new physics include a measurement that found the mass of a particle called the W boson to be greater than expected, announced in April.
There is yet another particle in this zoo behaving strangely: the W boson, which conveys the so-called weak force responsible for radioactive decay.
According to the Standard Model and previous mass measurements, the W boson should weigh about 80.357 billion electron volts, the unit of mass-energy favored by physicists.
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