gluon

noun

glu·​on ˈglü-ˌän How to pronounce gluon (audio)
: a hypothetical neutral massless particle held to bind together quarks to form hadrons

Examples of gluon in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Phiala Shanahan, a nuclear and particle physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, leads a team that computes the behavior of quarks and gluons starting from the equations of the strong force. Quanta Magazine, 14 Mar. 2024 There is a field for each of the particles in nature, from common particles such as electrons and photons to their more exotic cousins such as muons and gluons. Luke Caldwell, Scientific American, 16 Jan. 2024 Because protons are messy bags of smaller particles known as quarks and gluons, smashing them together releases only a fraction of the proton’s total energy. Katrina Miller, New York Times, 7 Dec. 2023 And finally, interactions between the quarks and the gluons produce the rest of the mass. Jackie Appel, Popular Mechanics, 31 Mar. 2023 Then in 1990, Steven Weinberg found a way to connect the world of quarks and gluons to sticky nuclei. WIRED, 10 Aug. 2023 The idea for the particle first emerged in the late 1970s, in an effort to solve a different puzzle relating to quarks and gluons. Rachel Courtland, IEEE Spectrum, 1 May 2014 By focusing on just the interactions that produced these J/psi particles, researchers were able to determine the radius of those strong-force gluons instead of the overall charge radius of the proton. Jackie Appel, Popular Mechanics, 31 Mar. 2023 There are also three fields of force: electromagnetism with its particles, the photons; the strong nuclear force with its gluons; and the weak nuclear force with its W and Z bosons. Popular Mechanics, 31 Mar. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'gluon.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1971, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of gluon was in 1971

Dictionary Entries Near gluon

Cite this Entry

“Gluon.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gluon. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.

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