Why is the Discovery of W and Z Bosons Important?
Most recent answer: 03/14/2015
- dalia (age 18)
sudan
Hello Dalia,
Just as the electrical force is mediated by exchange of massless photons, it was conjectured that there could be a particle or particles that mediated the weak interactions such as beta decay where neutrinos are involved. The photon is massless due to symmetry considerations but the W and Z don't have to be and in fact have masses of 80.1 and 91.2 Gev/c2 respectively. An elegant theory called electro-weak that would unify the electromagnetic photons and the vector bosons of the weak interactions was developed in the late 1960's and a Noble Prize was awarded to Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg in 1979. This unification now goes under the name 'Standard Model'. So the discovery of the W and Z were important verifications of this theory.
There are some nice articles on the subject that you might want to look at: and .
LeeH
(published on 03/14/2015)