The Field Guide to Particle Physics

Sean Downes

This is your informal guide to the subatomic ecosystem we’re all immersed in. In this series, we explore the taxa of particle species and how they interact with one another. Our aim is give us all a better foundation for understanding our place in the universe.

The guide starts with a host of different particle species. We’ll talk about their masses, charges and interactions with other particles. We’ll talk about how they are created, how they decay, and what other particles they might be made of.

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49 episodes
Updated Dec 7, 2022

Episodes49

Newest first

Feb 4, 2022 · 6 min
The Neutral Kaons
The neutral kaons are strange mesons that also live unexpectedly long. The difference between these two brings even more surprises. Their identities are a bit mixed up; they depend upon which nuclear force they're talking to.
Jan 28, 2022 · 5 min
The Eta and Eta Prime Mesons
The Eta and Eta Prime particles are a pair of electrically neutral particles that were - for a moment anyway - the center of a fierce debate among physicists.
Jan 21, 2022 · 4 min
The Charged Kaons
Strangeness - as a property of particles - was an attempt to explain why some particles took a really long time to decay. By that measure, the charged Kaons are definitely strange.
Jan 14, 2022 · 4 min
The Strange Quark
Quarks make up baryons like the proton and the neutron. Or more exotic things like the Lambda0 or the Delta++. Previously, we’ve learned about the up and down quarks - those fundamental constituents of matter like protons and neutrons. Today we’re learnin
Jan 12, 2022 · 3 min
The Lambda 0 Baryon
The long lifetime of the Lambda 0 was so strange that physicists knew there was something special about that particle. It had a special property. And in the 50’s this new property of particles was showing up in more and more experiments.
Jan 5, 2022 · 1 min
Season 2 Trailer : Introducing Strangeness
Happy New Year!! Welcome to the world of Strange particles, literally.
Dec 21, 2021 · 10 min
The Alpha Particle : Part 5 : The Solar Wind
Forget the Earth. This time we see how the production of helium via alpha decays powers a force field that surrounds and protects the Earth... and us.
Dec 12, 2021 · 10 min
The Alpha Particle : Part 4 : Inside the Earth
Finally, we answer the question: What on EARTH does Helium have to do with Particle Physics
Dec 9, 2021 · 9 min
The Alpha Particle : Part 3 : Binding Energy
Where does Helium come from? We finally explore this question, which becomes a discussion of nuclear physics and radioactivity.
Dec 6, 2021 · 12 min
The Alpha Particle : Part 2 : The Helium Shortage
Helium is at scale used for all kinds of industrial purposes, including superconducting magnets! We explore these example, and describe where on Earth Helium comes from. Finally we review the recent history of government policy and the commodities market
Dec 2, 2021 · 6 min
The Alpha Particle : Part 1 : Helium
The Alpha Particle Mini-Series begins with a discussion of Helium gas. What on EARTH does Helium have to do with particle physics?
Oct 8, 2021 · 4 min
The Higgs Boson
As far as we know, there is no other particle like the Higgs Boson, but there probably should be.
Oct 7, 2021 · 3 min
The Z Boson
Every once in a while, without warning, an electron is accelerated seemingly out of nowhere. Ripped from whatever atom, molecule or metal it had been associated with, it suddenly becomes it’s own ballistic particle. When this happens, a Z-boson has almost
Oct 6, 2021 · 3 min
W Boson
With a mass of 80.4 GeV, the W-bosons are heavy particles. On paper, they carry the weak nuclear force and have much in common with the photon and the gluon. But look closely, these bosons are very different beasts.
Oct 5, 2021 · 6 min
The Gluon
The strong nuclear force - the fundamental force behind the subnuclear junk we find inside the nucleons - is communicated via a particle very similar to the photon. But you’ll have to excuse their name, however apt. The particles that communicate between
Oct 4, 2021 · 4 min
The Delta Baryons
The Delta baryons are combinations of up and down quarks. They’re like the proton and the neutron, only much more heavy and much less stable. They all seem to have about the same mass - around 1232 MeV, but we don’t really have a good handle on it. That i
Oct 3, 2021 · 3 min
The Neutral Pion
In many ways, the neutral pion - sometimes call the π0 meson - is closely related to the charged pions. In others, the neutral pion is a truly bizarre little beast.
Oct 2, 2021 · 4 min
The Charged Pion
There are three kinds of pions: pi plus, pi minus and pi zero. Compared to the proton, they’re quite small and a little quirky. They’re certainly unstable. Today we’ll talk about those charged pions, π±.
Oct 1, 2021 · 3 min
The Neutron
With a mass of 939.565 MeV, the neutron is the second lightest baryon - that is, a particle made up of three quarks. The neutron's quarks include one up and two downs, so it is total electric charge is zero. The neutron may be electrically neutral, but do
Sep 30, 2021 · 3 min
The Proton
With a mass of 938.27 MeV, the proton is the lowest energy configuration of a trio of quarks. It has two up quarks and a down, but remember most of that mass is made up of subnuclear goo. You can find protons literally everywhere: from the nuclei of atoms