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In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] They vary greatly in size or quantity, from subatomic particles like the electron , to microscopic particles like atoms and molecules ...
Since then, the particle has been shown to behave, interact, and decay in many of the ways predicted for Higgs particles by the Standard Model, as well as having even parity and zero spin, two fundamental attributes of a Higgs boson. This also means it is the first elementary scalar particle discovered in nature.
Particle size is a notion introduced for comparing dimensions of solid particles (), liquid particles (), or gaseous particles ().The notion of particle size applies to particles in colloids, in ecology, in granular material (whether airborne or not), and to particles that form a granular material (see also grain size).
Even among particle physicists, the exact definition of a particle has diverse descriptions. These professional attempts at the definition of a particle include: [7] A particle is a collapsed wave function; A particle is a quantum excitation of a field; A particle is an irreducible representation of the Poincaré group; A particle is an ...
Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the scale of protons and neutrons , while the study of combination of protons and neutrons is called nuclear physics .
The photon has no electric charge, [17] [18] is generally considered to have zero rest mass [19] and is a stable particle. The experimental upper limit on the photon mass [20] [21] is very small, on the order of 10 −50 kg; its lifetime would be more than 10 18 years. [22] For comparison the age of the universe is about 1.38 × 10 10 years.
A tachyon is a particle that travels faster than light (superluminal), which is considered impossible. And a tachyon field, therefore, is something that doesn’t fit into our current understanding.
A neutrino (/ nj uː ˈ t r iː n oʊ / new-TREE-noh; denoted by the Greek letter ν) is an elementary particle that interacts via the weak interaction and gravity. [2] [3] The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass is so small that it was long thought to be zero.