Some bosons are quite massive. Like the W and Z gauge bosons. You measure their mass by reconstructing the kinematics of their relativistic decay. Some bosons are not so massive, but it's probably very difficult measure their mass directly, even though they are all in the same (or similar) quantum state. See Cooper Pairs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_boson#Massive_gauge_bosons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_pair On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 7:53 PM, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
"An important characteristic of bosons is that their statistics do not restrict the number that can occupy the same quantum state"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boson
Ok, suppose that I want to _weigh_ one boson. I guess that most bosons are pretty light, so I'll have to weigh a bunch of identical bosons (in "the same" quantum state) & divide by their number.
Q: Does this work? Is there any additional energy required to hold them together that would show up as additional mass? Or does an individual boson weigh more singly than when together in "the same" quantum state?
How big is the biggest boson, anyway?
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun