baryon
Americannoun
noun
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012-
Any of a family of subatomic particles composed of three quarks or three antiquarks. They are generally more massive than mesons, and interact with each other via the strong force. Baryons form a subclass of hadrons and are subdivided into nucleons and hyperons. Protons and neutrons are baryons.
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See Table at subatomic particle
Other Word Forms
- baryonic adjective
Etymology
Origin of baryon
1950–55; < Greek barý ( s ) heavy + (fermi)on
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
However, interest in evolving dark energy was vigorously rekindled last year from the combination of supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillation, and cosmic microwave background data from the DES, DESI, and Planck experiments.
From Science Daily
Among those particles were hydrogen and helium nuclei, collectively called baryons.
From Science Daily
Sound waves reverberated through the gas like ripples in a pond, causing baryons to clump together, forming the seeds of future galaxies and clusters of galaxies.
From Science Magazine
BAO stands for “baryon acoustic oscillation,” a sort of frozen sound wave created by processes near the dawn of time.
From Scientific American
It is believed to be a baryon acoustic oscillation, a pressure wave frozen in time from the beginning of the cosmos and then stretched out to galactic scales by the universe’s expansion.
From Scientific American
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.