Questions tagged [particle-physics]
For questions about Particle Physics - a branch of Physics that studies the nature of the particles that constitute matter and radiation
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Did breaking of discrete symmetries play a role in the development of steady-state cosmology?
If you look at the original pair of 1948 papers[Bondi 1948,Hoyle 1948] that proposed the steady-state model, it's clear that they knew they were throwing out a lot of cherished principles of physics. ...
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How did Rutherford detect the deflected alpha particles?
All I know is that detecting the deflecting alpha particles was a very tedious process, so much so that that was probably one reason why he asked Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden to do the experiment. ...
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In which paper did the typical textbook diagrams of the Millikan experiment appear the first time?
There are two typical visualizations for one of the results of the Millikan oil-drop experiment to illustrate that only integer multiples of some elementary charge occur in nature.
The first one is ...
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Who invented the quadrupole lens for charged particles?
I am wondering who actually invented the (magnetic) quadrupole lens or who used it for the first time. I have found some papers from the 50s and 60s about more complicated systems based on Quadrupoles,...
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Difference between Perrin's and J. J. Thomson's experiment
In J. J. Thomson's paper (Phil. Mag. S. 5. Vol. 44. No. 269. Oct. 1897) concerned with cathode rays, Thomson writes, that the experiment by Perrin that supposedly proves that cathode rays are made of ...
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What was Higgs' attitude towards his own mechanism?
Higgs invented a mechanism to endow quarks and leptons an W- and Z-particles with mass. If a particle is massless though then how can it be slowed down by interacting with another particle? Maybe the ...
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What inspired the use of the term "gauge" in gauge theories?
Gauge theories in physics are theories that introduce extra fields, the mediating fields, after the non-mediated fields are gauged.
Now to gauge something means that you set some reference point from ...
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Did aesthetics play a role in the construction of the Standard Model?
The Standard Model is a sophisticated mathematical framework to capture the behavior of elementary particles. It is a dream castle which is built on loose sand and every change in its construction or ...
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When the concept of "Ultraviolet completion" of a low energy effective theory first arose?
In modern view any quantum field theory that has any reason (mathematical or physical) to not be tenable at some short length scale is assumed to be replaced by a more fundamental theory, that we call ...
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Who described the weak interaction as a non-contact force?
It is known that Enrico Fermi described the weak interaction as a four-fermion contact interaction, and Steven Weinberg, Sheldon L. Glashow and Abdus Salam developed the electroweak theory, in which ...
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When was the bitter controversy between Ehrenhaft and Millikan ended?
Felix Ehrenhaft made a claim that he saw electric charges smaller than an electron. In that respect he was ahead of his time. Far ahead, as quarks haven't been detected yet directly.
His measurements ...
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Why was the attitude towards hadrons different from the attitude towards quarks and leptons these days?
The quark model was introduced to explain the variety of hadrons. Experiments could be done to test this.
These days you could have the same attitude towards quarks and leptons. I mean to consider a ...
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Dirac and proton-electron annihilation
Wikipedia says:
Robert Oppenheimer argued strongly against the proton being the negative-energy electron solution to Dirac's equation. He asserted that if it were, the hydrogen atom would rapidly ...
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