The W Particle

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The W Particle

2/14/19

By: Kyle Wang

A subatomic particle is a particle that is smaller than an atom, the building block of all things. Some examples of these are protons, neutrons, electrons; in addition to some lesser known ones, such as the quark, neutrino, and the graviton. However, a particle that most people do not know about (myself included) is the W Particle. The W Particle is a subatomic particle that transmits the "weak force", which in turn, governs radioactive decay in certain kinds of atomic nuclei.

The properties of the W Particle were predicted in the late 1960s, about 10 to 15 years before their actual discovery in 1983, by Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer. They were first predicted by Sheldon Lee Glashow, Steven Weinberg, and Abdus Salam, when they figured out that the electromagnetic force and the weak force are not much different than people once thought they were. W Particles and Z Particles are comparable to the electromagnetic forces with the protons, neutrons, and electrons. The W+ Particle is positive, like the proton. The Z Particle is neutral like the neutron, and the W- Particle is negative, like the electron.

Scientist Carlo Rubbia from the company CERN won the Nobel Prize in 1984 in the physics category after discovering the particles. The predictions made back in 1960 said that the W particle has a mass of 80 billion electrovolts, while the Z particle had a mass of 90 billion electrovolts. During the experiments, Glashow and his group was not far off, as the actual masses were listed as 82 billion electrovolts and 93 electrovolts respectively. In addition, the first experiments conducted at CERN  had 10 W particles and 4 Z particles. However, later on, the D0 detector facility at Fervilab was much more accurate and found over 100,000 W particles.

Like I mentioned in the beginning, W Particles are critical influences of radioactive decay. Since radioactive decay can be extremely dangerous, perhaps one thing that could be done in the future is altering W Particles. I think that if we are able to alter W Particles, then maybe scientists can find ways to make W Particles safer and less radioactive, which therefore puts less lives in jeopardy. W Particles can be man-made using particle accelerators, which might make the W Particles easier to alter. Overall, the possible alteration of W Particles is certainly in a good direction as these particles have already been generated in large numbers, as high as 1,800 billion electrovolts using a collider at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
This is an image of the D0 Detector Facility
Image result for w particle
How W Particles were discovered
https://www.britannica.com/science/W-particle
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Particles/expar.html

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