Hadron Meaning
We have universally acceptable scales to measure the size of objects around us. As we go higher up the normal scale the things get bigger and their scales also get bigger. Just like that, we can go on a smaller scale, where a mass is a combination of a number of molecules and a molecule is a combination of a number of atoms. Here the hadron is a subatomic term that is smaller than an atom. Even the subatomic parts are made of some things which are smaller than that and called quarks. In a simple word hadron is a subatomic particle. On that level, hadrons are known as the heaviest particle.
Insight to What is A Hadron
A hadron is a subatomic particle that contains quarks, antiquarks, and gluons. Any atom containing quarks, antiquarks, and gluons will be considered as hadron. Every hadron will definitely have at least three quarks, three antiquarks, and gluons. In hadrons, even colors of that quark and antiquark do matter a lot. Hadrons are characterized by strong interacting particles.
Hadron carries a strong electric charge because the quarks which are inside the hadron, they carry functional electric charges. Hence the combination of those quarks makes a combined electric charge and hadron carry a net charge of all the quarks.
Types of Hadron
Hadron comes under strong interacting particles. Since hadron is made by the combination of quarks, antiquarks, and gluons, on the basis of the combination, the hadron is classified into two main types.
Mesons
Baryons
Mesons
Mesons have the mass which ranges in between the mass of the electron and the mass of the proton. It is the combination of a quark and an antiquark. Since it is a highly interacting antiparticle, it is highly unstable. But instability does not affect their lives. They still survive for a long period of time which is a few billionths of seconds. Every meson has a different mass and they all vary in mass at a large range.
Baryons
Baryons have a mass that will be either equal to the mass of the proton or greater than the mass of the proton. It has the combination of three quarks that is, it has valence quarks containing an odd number. It is also a form of fermion family. Since fermions have half-integral spin all the particles under baryons will have half-integral spin.
Hadron Particle
The Hadron particle has the longest life from all the other particles which get converted into another form.
The meson, which is a type of hadron, has almost 140 types. From all of them, the lightest meson known is the pion.
The mesons come under bosons which have integral multiple spins.
Some of the particles which come under mesons are pion, kaon, and eta. Pion and eta have zero strangeness. Kaon strangeness is +1.
Barton, another form of a hadron, has almost 120 known types.
Some of the particles which come under baryon are nuclei, Lambda, Sigma, Xi, Omega. From all of them, Omega has a bigger mass.
The strangeness of nuclei is zero and the strangeness of Lambda and Sigma are -1. Xi has strangeness of -2 and Omega has the most negative strangeness which is -3.
From all of the baryon particles, a proton is the lightest particle. Since the proton is the lightest particle, it is the only hadron particle that remains stable also in free space.
Hadron Collider
The large hadron collider (LHC) is a particle collider and the world’s largest machine. It is a very powerful particle accelerator.
It was built in the time period of 1998 and 2008, by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).
This collider is 26.7 kilometers long in a circle and is placed in a tunnel of 27 kilometers.
It is placed below France -Switzerland border near to Geneva in the deep, ranging from 50 meters to about 175 meters. The weight of this machine is more than 38000 tones.
This machine is useful in reproducing the condition which existed after the big bang collision. Colliding beams of high energy protons or ions, it is tried to reproduce the condition which was there in between the billionth of seconds after the big bang.
This big bang situation was held almost 13.7 billion years back.
If we consider the large hadron collider (LHC) project then the hadron is the only one part of it. The other two parts of LHC are the detectors and worldwide LHC computing grid (WLCG).
The four detectors which are used are ATLAS, ALICE, CMS, and LHC. These detectors are placed in the chamber around the collider. These detectors are used in detecting the outcomes which get after the collision of the high energy particles.
FAQs on Hadron
1. Is There Something Smaller Than A Quark?
There is something smaller than a quark, that is called a preon. Preons are point particles. Preons are considered as a subcomponent of quarks and leptons. Preon was considered anomalies to explain two fermion families of spin minus half. Those two fermion families were leptons and quarks. Later one more preon model was discovered which actually belonged to the boson family. That preon model had spin minus one but still, it was called by name preon. Preon models are used to explain the standard models which are helpful in generating new particles.
2. What Are Preon Stars?
Preon stars are made of only preons. The detection of it was made on the basis of a theory. The theory was, everything starts from a small thing, and then it becomes bigger. Similarly, in the case of atoms and subatomic particles also, the sub-sub atomic particle may have come before the subatomic particle. And subatomic particles may also have come before the atomic particle. It was also believed that the stars which are not able to become a neutron star or are not stable enough to become a black hole, become a preon star.