Accelerator Annihilation Antimatter Antiparticle Antiquark Astrophysics

B-Factory Baryon Beam Big Bang Theory Boson Bottom Quark

CERN Charge Charge Conservation Charm Quark Collider Color Charge Confinement Conservation Cosmology

Dark Matter Decay Down Quark

Electric Charge Electromagnetic Interaction Electron Electroweak Interaction Event

Fermilab Fermion Fixed-target Experiment Flavor Fundamental Interaction Fundamental Particle

Generation GeV Gluon Gravitational Interaction Graviton

Lepton LHC Linacs

Mass Meson Muon Muon Chamber

Neutral Neutrino Neutron (n) Nucleus

Particle Pauli Exclusion Principle Photon Pion Positron (e⁺) Proton (p)

Quantum Quantum Mechanics Quark (q)

Residual Interaction Rest Mass

SLAC Spin Stable Standard Model Strange Quark (s) Strong Interaction Subatomic Particle Synchrotron

Tau TeV Top Quark (t) Track Tracking

Uncertainty Principle Up Quark

Virtual Particle

W+, W- Boson Weak Interaction

The Particle Adventure - Glossary

Virtual Particle

A particle that exists only for an extremely brief instant in an intermediary process. Then the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle allows an apparent violation of the conservation of energy. However, if one sees only the initial decaying particle and the final decay products, one observes that the energy is conserved.