the schoolboy in is amused (again)

[adelaidesean]

I can't believe I've never heard of this before. It's not April 1st, is it?

"Physicists Discover New Particle: the Bottom-most 'Bottomonium'"

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Listening to: Harold Budd & Robin Guthrie - Childhood Lost

Comments

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

When it comes to Quarks and related elementary particle stuff, there seems to be some sort of a competition amongst Physicist as to who can come up with the best name - something whimsical but not so silly as to be rejected.

There are six different types of quark, (a.k.a. flavors of quarks) - up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom. Each has an anti particle - anti-up, anti-down etc.

So if you combine a bottom quark and an anti-bottom quark you get bottomonium. Seems quite reasonable to me.