kaon

noun

ka·​on ˈkā-ˌän How to pronounce kaon (audio)
: an unstable meson that occurs in both charged and neutral forms and is about 970 times more massive than an electron

Examples of kaon in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
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The kaons then fly down a roughly 150-meter-long vacuum tunnel. Clara Moskowitz, Scientific American, 1 Oct. 2024 The kaon, a special case of meson particle, is made of one quark and one antiquark. Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 6 Mar. 2020 This symmetry would be all well and good if physicists had not discovered in 1964 that the weak nuclear force doesn’t share it: Two-quark particles called neutral kaons decay in ways CP symmetry forbids. Quanta Magazine, 27 Nov. 2019 Alternatively, the hidden depths of neutron stars might be filled with kaons — also made with strange quarks — that collect into a single lump of matter sharing the same quantum state. Quanta Magazine, 30 Oct. 2017 An experiment in 1964 involving exotic particles called kaons violated charge-parity symmetry. Avery Thompson, Popular Mechanics, 13 Dec. 2017 The Xi decays into a particle called the lambda baryon and three lighter particles, the K- (or kaon) and two pions. Fox News, 11 July 2017 The most famous of these two-quark particles are kaons and pions. Adam Mann, WIRED, 17 June 2013

Word History

Etymology

International Scientific Vocabulary ka kay (from K-meson, its earlier name) + -on entry 2

First Known Use

1958, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of kaon was in 1958

Dictionary Entries Near kaon

Cite this Entry

“Kaon.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kaon. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.

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