Talk:Massive particle

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reference or delete[edit]

The references in this article refer back to this article and so provide no content. Whoever claims this is a real term should provide an actual external reference or this should be deleted. Joshua Davis 19:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Searching around a bit, I see that this is a real term(mentioned for instance in http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9506082 and other Arxiv papers). So I retract my suggestion for deletion. However the links are still worthless so I am removing them. It would be nice if someone can provide a definitive source for the coining of these terms. Joshua Davis 04:09, 19 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merge[edit]

I think this article should be merged with Mass in special relativity for the following reasons:

  • The concepts tardyon or bradyon are hardly used anywhere. Actually I have never seen them before.
  • The meaning is completely identical to that of a massive particle, which is the common concept used.
  • The article has very little content.

Dan Gluck 12:52, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I have changed my mind and in favor of deleting it.Dan Gluck (talk) 18:07, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

== There is a more complete explanation ==[edit]

A Tardon is a particle that moves slower than light
A Taxion is a particle that moves at the speed of light
A Tachyon is a particle that moves faster than light.

All three words have the same origin, I believe somewhere vaguely in the Victorian era. - I believe they are Greek or Latin and I (originally) came across them many years ago in a non-fiction book on extra-terrestrial life and stellar exploration by Isaac Asimov.
Lucien86 17:24, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above section has been moved from the article to the talk page, where it belongs Dan Gluck 17:39, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Hi Lucien86, the above three concepts (I think you have typos, the first two concepts should probably be Tardyon and Luxon) are already mentioned in the article. The origin of the terms (i.e. Greek or Latin, Victorian era, etc.) should appear in the relevant articles bearing these names. But you first have to check this, before you add it to these articles. Dan Gluck 17:43, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

basic word composition[edit]

Even if it were not in a dictionary yet, it still makes sense, since it's basic word composition.

Compare to tachycardia/bradycardia which have been similarly composed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.54.202.152 (talk) 22:37, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move (Aug 2011)[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Arbitrarily0 (talk) 21:50, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]


Bradyonmassive particleWaaay more common name (by several orders of magnitude) for the same concept. Also, for consistence with the article Massless particle which is not titled Luxon. A. di M.plédréachtaí 16:58, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment how does this take into account other uses of the term "massive particle" ? I don't see how your ngram search discriminates between uses. "massive" as in heavier than expected, or heavier than normal, or just plain heavy, instead of meaning "with mass". And how it discriminates between subatomic particles and those that aren't. Like massive particles in meteorological contexts. 70.24.246.151 (talk) 07:18, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The ngram was just to emphasize the point, but the fact is that I had never heard the word bradyon outside Wikipedia, despite being a graduate student of astroparticle physics. Also, statements like if electron neutrinos are massive typically mean “if electron neutrinos have a non-zero mass”, not “if electron neutrinos have a large mass”. (It does suggest “large” in weakly interacting massive particle, but I think it's more a matter of implicature than of literal meaning.) The fact that massive is a colloquial synonym of “huge” outside particle physics appears to be beyond the point to me – first, it's an informal usage I wouldn't use in an encyclopaedia anyway, and second, lots of terms in particle physics have other meaning outside it, but this is no good reason to move, say, Dressed particle to some obscure synonym that hardly anyone will have ever heard. (And what's your point about non-subatomic particle? If you have a positive rest mass you must travel slower than c, and vice versa, no matter how large or how small you are. And if massive particle had some other meaning in meteorology – which, on googling "massive particle" meteorology doesn't seem to be the case to me – the solution would be hatnotes/a disambiguation page/whatever, not keeping this article at such an obscure title. A. di M.plédréachtaí 11:07, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support although it does represent a change of topic. The proposed name is by far more common, and we need an article on it. In the fullness of time we may have an article with the current name as well. Andrewa (talk) 07:33, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

"The existence of massive luxons is a controversial issue"[edit]

Is it? In the luxon disambiguation page, a luxon is defined as "a massless particle in relativistic physics". Surely, then, "massive luxon" is an oxymoron...? -Anagogist (talk) 12:01, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merging content from Properties of Bradyons[edit]

It has been proposed that Properties of Bradyons (whose proposed deletion was contested) be merged to this article. It seems to me that Properties of Bradyons can't stand on its own as an article, but some of its content is worth keeping and merging. -Anagogist (talk) 12:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Properties of Bradyons no longer exists. Bradyon redirects here. LarryLACa (talk) 23:32, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Clarify massive as massful[edit]

Tweaked the top phrasing to distinguish the colloquial 'massive' (large) from the physics specific sense (massful):

The physics technical term massive particle refers to a massful particle which has real non-zero rest mass (such as baryonic matter), the counter-part to massless particle. LarryLACa (talk) 23:26, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]