• Question: If you find a new particle, what would you name it?

    Asked by anon-205629 to Gabriel on 4 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Gabriel Gallardo

      Gabriel Gallardo answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      It depends. Some of the particles we’re trying to look for already have names, and some of them are kind of silly. For example, particles from a theory called supersymmetry are called _sparticles_. Get it? S-particles? Like super-particles? 😅

      Some people are lucky enough to have particles named after them. Fermions are named for Enrico Fermi, bosons are named after Satyendra Nath Bose, and the Higgs boson is named after Peter Higgs. Fermi, Bose, and Higgs predicted that their particle existed before there was proof for it. I don’t think they named their particles themselves though, that’s just what people call them because they had the idea first.

      As for myself, I don’t think I’d be so lucky to have a “Gallardo particle” named after me, but one could dream, couldn’t they? 😉

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