The discovery of the W and Z bosons at CERN from "summary" of The God Particle by Leon M. Lederman,Dick Teresi
The W and Z bosons are the particles that carry the weak force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature. They are responsible for mediating interactions that involve the decay of particles and the fusion of atomic nuclei. For a long time, the W and Z bosons were purely theoretical constructs, predicted by the electroweak theory proposed by Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg in the 1960s. This theory unified the electromagnetic and weak forces into a single force and predicted the existence of the W and Z bosons as carriers of the weak force. The discovery of the W and Z bosons was a significant milestone in the field of particle physics as it provided experimental evidence for the electroweak theory. The search for these elusive particles was carried out at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, using the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) as a particle accelerator. The SPS collided protons with an energy of 270 GeV to create high-energy collisions that could potentially produce W and Z bosons. In 1983, researchers at C...
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