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Top 5: Kooky Particles

Duke physicist Mark Kruse talks about the crazy particles created when matter collides

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Nobody knows what the top quark looks like, but we'd like to think it looks a bit like our friend here. Credit: The Particle Zoo LLC

Mark Kruse is a Duke physicist who studies the super subatomic particles created when the basic building blocks of matter slam into each other in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider.

Some of the particles spit out by these collisions are pretty crazy. Here Kruse gives us a rundown of the top 5 weirdest particles physicists are hunting down and how they fit into our everyday life.

5. The kaon

It's made up of a "strange" quark plus either an "up" quark or "down" quark, a particle that makes up protons and neutrons. The kaon's decay to other types of particles also might help explain why there is a tiny excess of matter over anti-matter in the universe and, as a result, why we're even here.

4. The top quark

It is by far the heaviest of the known fundamental particles, weighing approximately the same as a gold atom. Why it has such a large mass is currently a mystery. It's perhaps the weightiest problem in particle physics.

3. The W boson

It indirectly causes nuclear decay, and its discovery in 1983 (together with the Z boson) was a spectacular verification of the theory that unites the weak nuclear force and the electromagnetic force. Its large mass also might be caused by a mechanism for the most sought after particle in high-energy particle physics, the Higgs boson.

2. The neutrino

It was recently discovered that these particles possess a very small mass, for reasons we don't yet understand. Because they only interact via the "weak nuclear interaction," and can travel through things, like Earth, it is extremely difficult to detect them. In other words, their shyness makes them hard to get to know.

1. The Higgs boson

Still undiscovered, but much needed by the Standard Model of particle physics, this particle can explain the masses of the fundamental constituents of matter in the observable universe. If we don't find it, or something like it, soon our favorite theories of the universe, its formation, age and existence will start to crumble.