Friday, October 26, 2012

Do The Tau Neutrino, Everybody!


Of all the sub-atomic particles, why is the Neutron the only one that gets its own dance?  


Jeremy is, of course, referring to the Pointer Sisters' 1984 smash hit "Neutron Dance."  Jeremy also, of course, didn't do any of the appropriate legwork to find out if there is in fact another dance out there named after a sub-atomic particle. 


While I'll certainly grant that there have been new particles theorized and discovered since 1984, I'm pretty sure nobody's named a jaunty popular song after one.  Of course, more recent science, including advanced particle colliders and the CERN Large Hadron Collider have expanded our understanding of sub-atomic composition and given us many new particles to choose from.

Specifically, there are now 6 different types of Quarks (including "Strange), six different Leptons, Gauge Bosons, Photons, Gluons, and of course, the ever-elusive Higgs Boson.  

Heck...even the Neutron itself isn't just a Neutron anymore.  But I certainly can't imagine the Pointer Sisters or anyone else remaking the song as the "One Up Quark, Two Down Quarks Dance."  That would be rhythmically challenging. 

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