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Z particle

noun

  1. 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
“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


Z particle

  1. See Z boson
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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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