7 ms·
FWIW Bosons are named after a person
by lalalandland 4y ago
FWIW Bosons are named after a person
- arthurcolle 4y agoI wonder how bose-einstein condensates would taste. Forbidden ice cream?
- frutiger 4y agoAnd of course fermions.
- frutiger 4y agoAnd while Gell-Mann did not name them after himself, “three quarks for Muster Mark” is a delightful origin of that particle’s name.
- wrycoder 4y agoWe started with up and down quarks, and then discovered the charmed and strange ones. It would have been appropriate, given the trend in quark naming, to call the next two gell and mann, but Feynman would have had a fit.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Sharlin 4y agoAs are fermions, but not hadrons ("stout"), baryons ("heavy"), mesons ("intermediate"), or leptons ("thin", "fine").
- Timwi 4y agoor tachyons (“fast”). What, what do you mean they don't exist?
- ithkuil 4y agoEven things that don't exist can have a name that does exist
- rootbear 4y agoIt was only when I saw the French spelling of Baritone is Baryton that I made the etymological connection between the "heavy" particle and the "heavy" male voice part.
- lokimedes 4y agoYou got me. But being a Fermion or a Boson is (IMO) a label for a generic property. and we have plenty of other such theoretical constructs named after the inventor: Weyl, Dirac, etc. we need language and labels to communicate ideas, so that is alight. But the Higgs particle and mechanism represents physical reality (now at least) which brings it to the level of electrons, quarks and the fundamental forces of nature. These names will stand for as long as our civilization. Who cares that someone predicted them a couple of years before their discovery when we are a century down the line. Just imagine if fire was known as the Peterson effect? Anyway that’s just my opinion.
- mike_hock 4y agoI question both the point and the well-definedness of this distinction between the concrete and the abstract. Does the Lorentz factor not "represent physical reality" and will it not also stand until the end of civilization? Why should a particle (almost) never be allowed to bear the name of its inventor, but an equation or a constant should?
- samatman 4y agoThe Planck length is another unassailable example in my opinion.
- rcshubhadeep 4y agoIt is named after Prof Satyendra Nath Bose. A physicist and true polyglot from pre-independent India. He was in his twenties when he figured this out. Of course never really received any larger fame, as is customary for Theoretical scientists from South East Asia (well most of the time) but if anyone is interested here is the story - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Nath_Bose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Nath_Bose
- gautamdivgi 4y agoThat’s interesting when you read the legacy section of the wiki. His work actually was the basis of 7 Nobel prizes but he himself did not get one.