A baryon consisting of four quarks and an antiquark.
Example sentencesExamples
Quarks come in oddly named ‘flavors,’ and all the new species include two strange, one anti-up, and either an up or a down quark among the five (the pentaquarks discovered last spring all had two ups, two downs, and one anti-strange).
Like recently discovered extrasolar planets that reveal new planetary configurations to astronomers, pentaquarks are alerting physicists to possible new sub-atomic arrangements, he adds.
The elusive pentaquark - comprising five quarks - failed to put in an appearance during experiments at the Accelerator Facility in Virginia specifically carried out to search for the little blighter.
Definition of pentaquark in US English:
pentaquark
nounˈpen(t)əˌkwärk
Physics
A baryon consisting of four quarks and an antiquark.
Example sentencesExamples
Like recently discovered extrasolar planets that reveal new planetary configurations to astronomers, pentaquarks are alerting physicists to possible new sub-atomic arrangements, he adds.
Quarks come in oddly named ‘flavors,’ and all the new species include two strange, one anti-up, and either an up or a down quark among the five (the pentaquarks discovered last spring all had two ups, two downs, and one anti-strange).
The elusive pentaquark - comprising five quarks - failed to put in an appearance during experiments at the Accelerator Facility in Virginia specifically carried out to search for the little blighter.