Hyperons

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Subatomic particles that participate in strong interactions and are classified as baryons, including the lambda and xi particles
2. High-mass particles that contain strange quarks and are not stable, often decaying into lighter particles
3. A category of baryons composed of three quarks, featuring at least one strange quark, exhibiting unique decay properties

Etymology: Hyperons are the plural of "hyperon," a term from particle physics. The "hyper-" part comes from the Greek "hyper," meaning "over" or "beyond," and it was attached to "-on," the standard physicists' ending for particles, as in "proton" and "neutron." Together the name signals a particle heavier than the nucleons, the protons and neutrons that make up atomic nuclei. The class is defined by its content: hyperons contain at least one strange quark, a flavour of quark that protons and neutrons lack. That extra mass and strangeness is why they are unstable and decay quickly into lighter particles, and why they appear mainly in high-energy collisions rather than in ordinary matter.