Advertisement

Advertisement

W boson

noun

  1. physics another name for W particle
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


W boson

  1. 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.
  2. See Table at subatomic particle
Discover More

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.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement