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Post by shadrack on Mar 12, 2022 3:42:52 GMT
When physicists talk about elementary particles in general, they're always plural: electrons, photons, neutrons, quarks, etc.
... all EXCEPT the Higgs boson. It's always "THE Higgs boson" (singular), never "Higgs bosons" (plural).
Anybody know why that is? I googled it, but found no answers.
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Post by Stammerhead on Mar 12, 2022 13:29:01 GMT
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Post by Sarge on Mar 13, 2022 6:47:40 GMT
Maybe just habit, because that's how people said it and it caught on. Boson is a type of particle that includes photons, gluons, and Higgs. They are part of the Higgs field.
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Post by shadrack on Mar 13, 2022 7:22:44 GMT
Maybe, but I've occasionally heard the same language used when referring to TYPES of particles, as in "there's an up quark and a down quark...", so it's not clear if they literally mean one Higgs boson in the entire universe, or one TYPE of Higgs boson.
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Post by Stammerhead on Mar 13, 2022 23:06:00 GMT
Maybe, but I've occasionally heard the same language used when referring to TYPES of particles, as in "there's an up quark and a down quark...", so it's not clear if they literally mean one Higgs boson in the entire universe, or one TYPE of Higgs boson.
It’s also referred to as The God Particle so perhaps there can be only one. A bit like Highlander. 
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on Mar 16, 2022 15:19:48 GMT
They are antisocial and hat the company of other bosons?
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Post by President Ackbar™ on Mar 16, 2022 15:34:41 GMT
When physicists talk about elementary particles in general, they're always plural: electrons, photons, neutrons, quarks, etc.
... all EXCEPT the Higgs boson. It's always "THE Higgs boson" (singular), never "Higgs bosons" (plural).
Anybody know why that is? I googled it, but found no answers.
Of course the word "boson" can be pluralized to "bosons" But other types of bosons exist. "The Higgs Boson" refers to that one specific type of boson. Multiple Higgs bosons in a bosonic field would indeed be referred to as "Higgs bosons"
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