Talk:Hadron

Stable Hadrons

The article says this "All hadrons except the proton are unstable." but neutrons, anti-protons and anti-neutrons are stable too. Just neutrons and protons destroy their anti counter part making them non-existent in the natural world. Not that they are not stable, just destroyed by other factors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.166.218.72 (talk) 20:41, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Free neutrons are unstable, with a half-life of less than 15 minutes. Eutactic (talk) 07:42, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Intro

the intro is just terrible. Physics aside, it seems just basic sentence construction is a lost skill. Go back to a physics book BEFORE ALL THE MODEL features (quarks for example) and you'll find the best definitions. You really think the first sentence should consist of quark MODEL stuff which fails to provide the basic definition ? The protons and neutrons were known to participate in strong interactions BEFORE quark models were around - no ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.201.140.130 (talk) 20:40, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Atoms

similarly to how atoms are held together by the electromagnetic force.

Aren't they held together by the residual strong force? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.240.187.236 (talk) 03:22, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

In the sense of an atom being a bound state of a nucleus and electrons and molecules being bound states of atoms, they are indeed held together by the electromagnetic force. The nucleus is held together (against mutual electrostatic repulsions between protons) by the residual strong force. Eutactic (talk) 03:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I had the same confusion. While electrons are certainly bound to nuclei via the electromagnetic force, that wasn't what first came to my mind. Perhaps it should be revised? Parkus.aurelius (talk) 16:18, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

"Class" of hadrons?

The article, Hadron, contain this assertion:

The class of hadrons is further subdivided into three subclasses

Does Physics have a formal classification system like Biology does? Bevo 14:54, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

In a sense, the representations of Lie groups provide the formal classification system. --Matt McIrvin 00:34, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Link change

Link to "Color Force" Might better go to Color charge instead of Quantum Chromodynamics. Thanks, (Jon) Aug 26, 2004

Zoo of elementary particles

Look here - http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/particle_zoo.html or here - http://pdg.lbl.gov/

-F —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.158.158.242 (talk • contribs) 03:40, 15 December 2004

Not Clear what a Hadron is

I guess that this is due to the intrinsic nature of Hadrons. But a reader can be confused. The first paragraph asserts that hadrons are not fundamental particle, I would change fundamental with elementary. But the last asserts that hadrons due to confinement are single particle exitation. Maybe a page which explains the difference between single particle excitation and elementary particle would be interesting. I guess that hadrons phylosophically just introduce a new concept. They are neither elementary nor composed (they cannot be splitted). The fact that they can disappear in other phases of the theory it isn't relvant.

It is like saying that ice disappears and melts in water. If you read something like this do you understand anything more about what really is ice? Maybe after you undertsand what ice is it is intersting to notice that it is built up from the same molecules then water.

Guess it is very difficult to explain something that we still don't understand deeply. I hope that this observation could help —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.116.81.194 (talk • contribs) 10:54, 28 September 2005

I agree with this observation. The first paragraph is unclear, and contains a hidden contradiction.

"A hadron, in particle physics, is a subatomic particle which experiences the nuclear force. These are not fundamental particles but are composed of fermions, called quarks and antiquarks, and of bosons, called gluons. The gluons mediate the color force that binds the quarks together."

If hadrons are "... composed of fermions ...", then since (para 3)"baryons are fermions", this contradicts "these are not fundamental particles", since some baryons include protons and neutrons.

Furthermore, the word "these" in the leading sentence is vague, as several nouns are referred to in the preceding sentence.

In fact, Merriam-Webster online defines hadron as: "Any of the subatomic particles (as protons and neutrons) that are made up of quarks and are subject to the strong force."

Consequently I'm improving the second sentence today ... but it's still too involved.

I recommend that someone more familiar with particle physics bring the definition more in line with Britannica concise (http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9366403/hadron). Twang 01:30, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the spirit of this contribution. The term is a collective noun. The article should open by saying or showing what a hadron is. It could use a table listing the particles and it could group them into the types. It could show the allowed values of the various characterising attributes, spin, a rest mass, colour etc. This would be really helpful. Right now one enters a real labyrinth and one has to click to many many pages to build up knowledge to even hint at that. The explanations given alreday are useful - they show the way a physicist thinks - but they make entry very near impenetrable. This page will be getting a lot of hammer from now on, and it absolutely has to be clear!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bicyclic (talk • contribs) 19:13, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Any explanation of something that relies too much on specialist terms, becomes non-understandable. For example, if I say a wongskon is a dinbowkdy with a subset montery-wingnut of 1/3 capacity-spin-charge, with an occasional subset of wongskons employing a raterol lateral emtranter, you'd have no clue what I'm talking about. (I have no clue what I'm talking about.) Sure, you'd have all these unknown terms linked to other Wikipedia articles, but those articles would all have similar explanations with links back to the wongskon article, and don't give a reader a starting point, a basis, for understanding the complex spider-web of particle physics. So you need to define a hadron and a boson and a 'strangeness' not only by defining their esoteric properties, but by describing WHAT THESE THINGS ARE in terms that can be understood. A good encyclopedia can take a complete novice to a decent level of understanding in a single article. But this article on hadrons, and the many other particle physics articles on Wikipedia, instead choose to take a "let's spew out all the technical vomit that nobody but insiders will understand." And hence this article leaves much to be desired. The art of explanation requires the appeal to what the reader knows, not what he doesn't know. Someone please take the time to EXPLAIN hadrons and bosons and strange force, rather than just defining them all in terms of each other. 147.240.236.8 (talk) 21:30, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

There used to be a computer game called Hadron...

Back in 1980 or 1981, a friend had an amazing video game called Hadron running on his Apple computer. I'm astonished that there seems to be no record of it. The game was obviously named for the atomic particle, even though the atomic particle had nothing to do with the space adventure in 3D.

If anyone has ever heard of the game, remembers playing it, or knows how to locate a version that would run on today's PCs, I'd love to see it posted here! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.50.20.214 (talk • contribs) 00:22, 21 July 2006

Hadron 2.1, maybe?

...well, try this one: http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Games/Hadron.shtml. :o)

Sorry, guys, I am a fresh meat here...

M* —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bycyq (talk • contribs) 23:49, 11 May 2007 (UTC).

I remember that game myself. It needed the joystick and you would fly around shooting ships, eventually you had to follow one back to its mothership and destroy that too. Its opening had a little snippet of music and then had a computer voice say "Hadron" Very cool for 1982. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jhenry922 (talk • contribs) 23:58, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Video of the game is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gea0_qlsgP4 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.80.37.51 (talk) 06:24, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Diagram

I think a coloured diagram might well explain where Hadrons stand among other particles, the article in its current form is rather confusing. I will on the diagram though. Λua∫Wise ^{(Operibus anteire)} 13:24, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Reorganization

I've reorganized this article, hopefully making it more accessible to non-specialists. Comments are very welcome. I preserved nearly all of the information that was already there. Jtuggle (talk) 17:43, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Origin of the word "hadron"?

Who coined this particularly typo-prone term? - David Gerard (talk) 14:39, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Chart

Cant we have a chart showing how hadrons relate to all the other particles? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.76.128.237 (talk) 19:19, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Definition

Opening paragraph suggests that all particles are either hadrons or leptons. My understanding is that the photon, the W, and other exchange particles are neither hadrons nor leptons, which would mean that statement is not true. The second sentence states that all fundamental particles interacting via the strong force are hadrons; again I believe that gluons interact by the strong force, but are not hadrons. I wouldn't refer to a quark (singly) as a hadron either, but they clearly interact by the strong force. So the first two sentences in this article would seem to completely incorrect. Please let me know if you think I'm wrong.Bobathon (talk) 13:13, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree, and I rewrote the paragraph. -- BenRG (talk) 15:31, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

As of 2009

"Other combinations, such as tetraquarks (an "exotic" meson) and pentaquarks (an "exotic" baryon), may be possible but no evidence conclusively suggests their existence as of 2009."

This is an unstable statement. The reason for such "as of [date]" statements is to eliminate claims about the present state, which is subject to unforeseen change. However, if something happens later in the year, this statement yields falsehood. Sure, you have error bars, so it's not as bad as just saying, "no evidence conclusively suggests their existence," but it still defeats the purpose of the safety mechanism to a degree. For this reason, I suggest that this sentence not be updated until 2010 is over. LokiClock (talk) 20:26, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

This article is nearly impossible to understand.

Hi guys,

It is nearly impossible to glean any real understanding of hadrons from this article, unless you're a quantum physicist. Given that quantum physicists already understand the information in this article, it would seem like a good idea to simplify the wording of this article, in particular, the lead section.

I gave this a go, but most of it was reverted. Here are some points:

1) Too many clarifications and similies in brackets makes paragraphs very hard to come to grips with.

2) It's pretty easy for even a simple person to grasp the concept that a "strong force" is able to hold a hadron together, and therefore superfluous (not to mention bad grammar) to say that it's "similar to how molecules are held together by the electromagnetic force".

3) Until their existence is provem, it's not really lead-section material to discuss whether other combinations of quarks may exist, such as tetraquarks (exotic meson) and pentaquarks (exotic baryon).

4) Most high-school science graduates have heard of protons and neutrons. On the other hand, I've never heard of anyone who's heard of pions or kaons. Do these warrant mention in the lead section?

What do you guys think?

InternetMeme (talk) 18:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I've made a few changes based on these suggestions; how are they? -RadicalOne---Contact Me 18:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that looks pretty good to me. I wonder how significant pions and kaons are? What are they, and what do they do? It seems like it might be good to shift the description of them out of thelead section, and into one of the article subsections. InternetMeme (talk) 19:34, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

If they are the best-known mesons, then it is likely they are significant and thus I would leave them in the lead. -RadicalOne---Contact Me 19:49, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

• 1/2: Quarks and the strong force are not things the average person knows about, and the relation needs to be explained in terms of something the average person is familiar with. The similee is a standard way to introduce hadrons to people who never heard them. Everyone heard of molecules and the electric force, and drawing parallels between them and the quarks/strong force provides readers a stable footing for the rest of the articles.
• 3/4: The lead should cover all major aspects of a subject, not only those who the average person knows about. Exotic hadrons and their status belong in the lead. Likewise for pions and kaons.

Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 22:00, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Hey, nice work guys (Headbomb and Timothy)!

The lead section is looking very good. I think the average person reading it would begin to understand what hadrons are now. One thing I would really like is to somehow get a mention of protons and neutrons in the first paragraph. I think I read somewhere (could be inaccurate) that in the statistics of people reading any given article, only 30% would read past the lead section, and only about 70% would actually read past the first paragraph. Given the only aspect of Hadrons that most people have heard of are the protons and neutrons, it'd be very good if the other 3% of people walked away fron this article thinking "Well, now I know that in everyday life, a Hadron is pretty much either a proton or a neutron! Other types exist, but they are rarely encountered". People have heard of protons and neutrons before; and without being able to connect the word "hadron" with any familiar concepts, they are likely to forget the word "hadron" altogether.

Also, I think there are likely to be a bunch of people looking up the Large Hadron Collider over the next couple of years (keep an eye on this page, and given that most people have a pretty good conception of ideas such as "large" and "collision", it serves to reason that their next stop will be this article : )

Hadron overhaul

In the past I've expanded several hadron articles, knowing more or less what I was doing. For example, I've included the B_s and B_c mesons in the B meson article. However, the B_s and B_c are as different from each other (and from the B mesons) than the B_s is different from the D_s.

What I'm getting at is that there should be individual articles for each hadronic isoplets. This means individual articles for:

• Nucleons (proton, neutron)
• Delta baryons
• Sigma baryons
• Charmed Sigma baryons
• Bottom Sigma baryons
• Xi baryons
• Charmed Xi baryons
• Bottom Xi baryons
• Double charmed Xi baryons
• Double bottom Xi baryons
• Charmed bottom Xi baryons
• Lambda baryon
• Charmed Lambda baryon
• Bottom Lambda baryon
• Charmed Xi prime baryon
• Bottom Xi prime baryon
• Charmed bottom Xi prime baryon
• Omega baryon
• And all other omegas, expect those with top quarks

And then the same thing for mesons. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:54, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

There's really no need for a page for every hadron flavor combination. Once page Nucleons, one for Deltas, one for Sigmas, one for Xi, and one for Omega. Then get one page for singly charmed baryons, one page for singly bottom baryons, and one page for doubly charmed. There is no need to talk about baryons that haven't been observed in experiments. And once you start talking about charm and bottom quarks, they dominate the physics so much that the up, down, and strange quarks don't matter much.

I'm not as familiar with the mesons, so I can't really comment on them, but similar consideration goes for them.

Frogjg2003 (talk) 07:03, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Transliterating the Greek in the Etymology section?

If somebody here knows how to read Greek, please could you transliterate the two Greek words (ἁδρός and λεπτός) in the first section of the article ("Etymology") - I imagine one of them probably sounds similar to "Hadron", so I think it would be helpful for non-Greek speakers to see the two words transliterated. Thanks!

• It's "(h)adros" and "leptos" [1] [2] - Mike Rosoft (talk) 07:39, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Pentaquarks found

Shouldn’t this Article be updated, to include the 2015 LHCb Pentaquarks findings? Also, in the intro it says, that a tetraquarks has been found, but in the Meson-section, it says, that that is still under debate. Which is it?--91.7.132.166 (talk) 08:09, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Classification

The subsections on baryons and mesons mention tetra- and pentaquarks, yet they specify that a baryon consists of three quarks and a meson of a quark and antiquark. So they don't really belong there, do they? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.70.124.121 (talk) 05:07, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Hadron/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

This page is of no help to a layman not already familiar with the subject. A definition should use known ideas to explain unknown ideas. The Science and Technology Encyclopedia says examples of hadrons are protons and neutrons as well as certain mesons. Protons and neutrons are something every school kid knows about. The Wikipedia definition/description should indicate right off the bat that protons and neutrons are examples of hadrons.

Last edited at 00:48, 21 April 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 16:57, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Drawing attention to a related discussion on Hadron terminology

Editors on this page may want to contribute at: Talk:Exotic baryon#Proposed rename to "Exotic hadron".

Thanks! FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 18:17, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

When is a hadron not an antihadron?

The term “antihadron” or “anti-hadron” is used twice in this article, without definition. The sentences the term is used in seem to treat it as a complement, as in “Almost all "free" hadrons and antihadrons ...”. That to me seems misleading, as it suggests mentioning both is necessary to form a complete whole, for which we have no better term than just listing both parts.

As I understand it, “antihadron” is a term of relationship, like “son” or “daughter”. When one refers to women in general, saying “women and daughters” would be silly, because every woman is also a daughter. With hadrons and antihadrons, the relationship is even more symmetric: Every hadron is an antihadron, just as every antihadron is a hadron.

So, does anyone see this differently, or can we remove these two mentions? ◅ Sebastian 07:21, 2 April 2021 (UTC)