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Z particle
noun
- physics a type of neutral elementary particle considered to transmit the weak interaction between other elementary particles. Z particles have a rest mass of 1.62557 × 10 –25kg Also calledZ boson See also W particle
Z particle
- See Z boson
Example Sentences
At times, the narratives feel disjointed and bogged down in arcane details and enigmatic concepts, for example, in a passage where Bobby discusses the theories of the physicist Steven Weinberg: “Still he figured that if you had these neutrino-nucleon collisions that spun off the W particle and gave you a lepton with the opposite charge you’d have to get a Z particle every once in a while. And since the Z carried no charge this meant that the neutrino coming in would stay a neutrino.”
The Z particle is electrically neutral, and an exchange of such particles is known as a neutral current.
Smashing electrons into their antimatter counterparts, positrons, results in cleaner collisions that typically produce one Z particle and one Higgs boson at a time, says Bill Murray of The University of Warwick in Coventry, U.K.
These odds were calculated by observing the behavior of the Z particle, the heaviest known unit of matter.
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