Boson

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This article is only a brief description of the subject, and is not intended to give a full explanation.
Check out the "see also" or "references" sections, or Wikipedia's article for more detail.
Were you looking for bosom?[1]

A boson is a fundamental subatomic particle that has integral spin. Examples of bosons include the photon and gluons. Bosons are one of two categories of fundamental subatomic particles, the other being fermions ("matter particles"). The most famous boson is the Higgs boson that is predicted by the Standard Model and gives other particles mass. CERN probably found it in July 2012.

[edit] Force mediation

The particles that carry the four fundamental forces of the universe are bosons. Gluons carry the strong nuclear force, for example, and virtual photons carry the electromagnetic force. It is an exchange of these virtual particles, or "gauge bosons", that creates the forces between two non-virtual particles. For example, two negatively-charged electrons repel each other because they are constantly shooting virtual photons at one another; each photon has a little bit of momentum, thus the transfer of photons pushes the electrons around. (This is one of the pillars of quantum electrodynamics; the exchange of gluons within a nucleus forms the basis of quantum chromodynamics.)

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. Also not to be confused with the bozon (the fundamental particle family of foolishness, which underlies creationism, quackery, all manner of woo, and many other things besides), or the bogon (the fundamental particle of bogosity, which malfunctioning computer equipment emits — sometimes profusely). If you were looking for Vogon, then (1) you're on the wrong wiki, and (2) you really need to work on your typing skills.
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