Antimatter

"In particle physics, antimatter is material composed of antiparticles, which have the same mass as particles of ordinary matter but have opposite charge and quantum spin. Antiparticles bind with each other to form antimatter in the same way that normal particles bind to form normal matter. For example, a positron (the antiparticle of the electron, with symbol e+) and an antiproton (symbol p) can form an antihydrogen atom. Furthermore, mixing matter and antimatter can lead to the annihilation of both, in the same way that mixing antiparticles and particles does, thus giving rise to high-energy photons (gamma rays) or other particle–antiparticle pairs. The result of antimatter meeting matter is an explosion."

"There is considerable speculation as to why the observable universe is apparently composed almost entirely of matter (as opposed to a mixture of matter and antimatter), whether there exist other places that are almost entirely composed of antimatter instead, and what sorts of technology might be possible if antimatter could be harnessed. At this time, the apparent asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the visible universe is one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics. The process by which this asymmetry between particles and antiparticles developed is called baryogenesis."

Xenon

"Xenon ( /ˈzɛnɒn/ zen-on or /ˈziːnɒn/ zee-non) is a chemical element with the symbol Xe and atomic number 54. It is a colorless, heavy, odorless noble gas, that occurs in the Earth's atmosphere in trace amounts.^[7] Although generally unreactive, xenon can undergo a few chemical reactions such as the formation of xenon hexafluoroplatinate, the first noble gas compound to be synthesize."

"Naturally occurring xenon consists of eight stable isotopes. There are also over 40 unstable isotopes that undergo radioactive decay. The isotope ratios of xenon are an important tool for studying the early history of the Solar System.^[11] Radioactive xenon-135 is produced from iodine-135 as a result of nuclear fission, and it acts as the most significant neutron absorber in nuclear reactors."

"Xenon is used in flash lamps^[13] and arc lamps,^[14] and as a general anesthetic.^[15] The first excimer laser design used a xenon dimer molecule (Xe₂) as its lasing medium,^[16] and the earliest laser designs used xenon flash lamps as pumps.^[17] Xenon is also being used to search for hypothetical weakly interacting massive particles^[18] and as the propellant for ion thrusters in spacecraft."

Neutrino

"A neutrino ( /njuːˈtriːnoʊ/; Italian pronunciation: [neuˈtriːno]) is an electrically neutral, weakly interacting elementary subatomic particle^[1] with half-integer spin. The neutrino (meaning "small neutral one" in Italian) is denoted by the Greek letter ν (nu). All evidence suggests that neutrinos have mass but that their mass is tiny even by the standards of subatomic particles. Their mass has never been measured accurately."

"Neutrinos do not carry electric charge, which means that they are not affected by the electromagnetic forces that act on charged particles such as electrons and protons. Neutrinos are affected only by the weak sub-atomic force, of much shorter range than electromagnetism, and gravity, which is relatively weak on the subatomic scale. They are therefore able to travel great distances through matter without being affected by it."

"Neutrinos are created as a result of certain types of radioactive decay, or nuclear reactions such as those that take place in the Sun, in nuclear reactors, or when cosmic rays hit atoms. There are three types, or "flavors", of neutrinos: electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos. Each type is associated with an antiparticle, called an "antineutrino", which also has neutral electric charge and half-integer spin. Whether or not the neutrino and its corresponding antineutrino are identical particles has not yet been resolved, even though the antineutrino has an opposite chirality to the neutrino."

Ruthenium

"Ruthenium ( /ruːˈθiːniəm/ roo-thee-nee-əm) is a chemical element with symbol Ru and atomic number 44. It is a rare transition metal belonging to the platinum group of the periodic table. Like the other metals of the platinum group, ruthenium is inert to most chemicals. The Russian scientist Karl Ernst Claus discovered the element in 1844 and named it after Ruthenia, the Latin word for Rus' (ancient Russia). Ruthenium usually occurs as a minor component of platinum ores and its annual production is only about 20 tonnes.^[3] Most ruthenium is used for wear-resistant electrical contacts and the production of thick-film resistors. A minor application of ruthenium is its use in some platinum alloys."

"Ruthenium has four crystal modifications and does not tarnish at normal temperatures. Ruthenium dissolves in fused alkalis, is not attacked by acids but is attacked by halogens at high temperatures. Small amounts of ruthenium can increase the hardness of platinum and palladium. The corrosion resistance of titanium is increased markedly by the addition of a small amount of ruthenium."

"This metal can be plated either by electroplating or by thermal decomposition methods. A ruthenium-molybdenum alloy is known to be superconductive at temperatures below 10.6 K."

W Boson

"The W and Z bosons (together known as the weak bosons) are the elementary particles that mediate the weak interaction; their symbols are W+, W−and Z. The W bosons have a positive and negative electric charge of 1 elementary charge respectively and are each other's antiparticle. The Z boson is electrically neutral and its own antiparticle. All three of these particles are very short-lived with a half-life of about 3×10⁻²⁵ s. Their discovery was a major success for what is now called the Standard Model of particle physics."

"The W bosons are named after the Weak force. The physicist Steven Weinberg named the additional particle the "Z particle"^[3], later giving the explanation that it was the last additional particle needed by the model – the W bosons had already been named – and that it has Zero electric charge."

"The two W bosons are best known as mediators of neutrino absorption and emission, where their charge is associated with electron or positron emission or absorption, always causing nuclear transmutation. The Z boson is not involved in the absorption or emission of electrons and positrons."

Thallium

"Thallium ( /ˈθæliəm/ thal-ee-əm) is a chemical element with symbol Tl and atomic number 81. This soft gray poor metal is not found free in nature. When isolated, it resembles tin, but discolors when exposed to air. Chemists William Crookes and Claude-Auguste Lamy discovered thallium independently in 1861, in residues of sulfuric acid production. Both used the newly developed method of flame spectroscopy, in which thallium produces a notable green spectral line. Thallium, from Greek θαλλός, thallos, meaning 'a green shoot or twig,' was named by Crookes. It was isolated by electrolysis a year later, by Lamy."

"Thallium tends to oxidize to the +3 and +1 oxidation states as ionic salts. The +3 state resembles that of the other elements in thallium's group (boron, aluminum, gallium, indium). However, the +1 state, which is far more prominent in thallium than the elements above it, recalls the chemistry of alkali metals, and thallium (I) ions are found geologically mostly in potassium-based ores, and (when ingested) are handled in many ways like potassium ions (K⁺) by ion pumps in living cells."

Photon

"A photon is an elementary particle, the quantum of light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force, even when static via virtual photons. The effects of this force are easily observable at both the microscopic and macroscopiclevel, because the photon has no rest mass; this allows for interactions at long distances. Like all elementary particles, photons are currently best explained by quantum mechanics and exhibit wave–particle duality, exhibiting properties of both waves and particles. For example, a single photon may be refracted by a lens or exhibit wave interference with itself, but also act as a particle giving a definite result when its position is measured."

"The modern concept of the photon was developed gradually by Albert Einstein to explain experimental observations that did not fit the classical wave model of light. In particular, the photon model accounted for the frequency dependence of light's energy, and explained the ability of matter andradiation to be in thermal equilibrium. It also accounted for anomalous observations, including the properties of black body radiation, that other physicists, most notably Max Planck, had sought to explain using semiclassical models, in which light is still described by Maxwell's equations, but the material objects that emit and absorb light, do so in amounts of energy that are quantized (i.e., they change energy only by certain particular discrete amounts and cannot change energy in any arbitrary way). Although these semiclassical models contributed to the development of quantum mechanics, many further experiments^[2][3] starting with Compton scattering of single photons by electrons, first observed in 1923, validated Einstein's hypothesis that light itself is quantized. In 1926 the chemist Gilbert N. Lewis coined the name photon for these particles, and after 1927, when Arthur H. Compton won the Nobel Prize for his scattering studies, most scientists accepted the validity that quanta of light have an independent existence, and Lewis' term photon for light quanta was accepted."

Curium

"Curium ( /ˈkjʊəriəm/ kewr-ee-əm) is a transuranic radioactive chemical element with the symbol Cm and atomic number 96. This element of the actinide series was named after Marie Skłodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre Curie - both were known for their research on radioactivity. Curium was first intentionally produced and identified in July 1944 by the group of Glenn T. Seaborg at the University of California, Berkeley. The discovery was kept secret and only released to the public in November 1945. Most curium is produced by bombarding uranium orplutonium with neutrons in nuclear reactors – one tonne of spent nuclear fuel contains about 20 grams of curium."

"Curium is a hard, dense, silvery metal with a relatively high melting point and boiling point for an actinide. Whereas it is paramagnetic at ambient conditions, it becomes antiferromagnetic upon cooling, and other magnetic transitions are also observed for many curium compounds. In compounds, curium usually exhibits valence +3 and sometimes +4, and the +3 valence is predominant in solutions. Curium readily oxidizes, and its oxides are a dominant form of this element. It forms strongly fluorescent complexes with various organic compounds, but there is no evidence of its incorporation into bacteria and archaea. When introduced into the human body, curium accumulates in the bones, lungs and liver, where it promotes cancer."

Gluon

"Gluons ( /ˈɡluːɒnz/; from English glue) are elementary particles that act as the exchange particles (or gauge bosons) for the strong force between quarks, analogous to the exchange of photons in the electromagnetic force between two charged particles."

"Since quarks make up the baryons and the mesons, and the strong interaction takes place between baryons and mesons, one could say that the color force is the source of the strong interaction, or that the strong interaction is like a residual color force that extends beyond the baryons, for example when protons and neutrons are bound together in a nucleus."

"In technical terms, they are vector gauge bosons that mediate strong interactions of quarks in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Unlike theelectrically neutral photon of quantum electrodynamics (QED), gluons themselves carry color charge and therefore participate in the strong interaction in addition to mediating it, making QCD significantly harder to analyze than QED."

Tantalum

"Tantalum ( /ˈtæntələm/ tan-təl-əm) is a chemical element with the symbol Ta and atomic number 73. Previously known as tantalium, the name comes from Tantalus, a character from Greek mythology.^[3] Tantalum is a rare, hard, blue-gray, lustrous transition metal that is highly corrosion resistant. It is part of the refractory metals group, which are widely used as minor component in alloys. The chemical inertness of tantalum makes it a valuable substance for laboratory equipment and a substitute for platinum, but its main use today is in tantalum capacitors in electronicequipment such as mobile phones, DVD players, video game systems and computers. Tantalum, always together with the chemically similarniobium, occurs in the minerals tantalite, columbite and coltan (a mix of columbite and tantalite)."

"Tantalum is dark (blue-gray),^[16] dense, ductile, very hard, easily fabricated, and highly conductive of heat and electricity. The metal is renowned for its resistance to corrosion by acids; in fact, at temperatures below 150 °C tantalum is almost completely immune to attack by the normally aggressive aqua regia. It can be dissolved with hydrofluoric acid or acidic solutions containing the fluoride ion and sulfur trioxide, as well as with a solution of potassium hydroxide. Tantalum's high melting point of 3017 °C (boiling point 5458 °C) is exceeded only by tungsten, rhenium andosmium for metals, and carbon."