Word: flavors of quark

Responses

1. 

   qurgh August 23, 2025

   Can we make these using ngochjuH?

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   1. 

      Benjamin August 23, 2025

      Please wait for a real expert to confirm this, but I THINK you could do something like:

      (tISbogh) ngochjuH ruS: UP
      (tISbogh) ngochjuH ngIng: DOWN

      tISbogh might not be necessary since UP and DOWN are the most abundant quarks by a factor of 99.999999999…%, but if necessary, for CHARM and STRANGE we could respectively replace tInbogh with 'ughbogh. And then for TOP and BOTTOM maybe 'ughqu'bogh. I think theory only allows for 3 generations so tIS/'ugh/'ughqu' might be sufficient?

      For the antiquarks, just add rugh in front of all of it. And then it's important to see that "((rugh ngochjuH) ruS)" is not the same as "(rugh (ngochjuH ruS))" so maybe then it can be good to always have the "tISbogh" so we know "rugh tISbogh ngochjuH ruS" can only be an antiUP.

      Please someone confirm this makes sense…
      1. 

         Benjamin August 23, 2025

         One typo: tISbogh not tInbogh
      2. 

         enru August 25, 2025

         Using {'ugh} to mean 'having more mass' makes sense because of {bIQSIp 'ugh} 'deuterium'.

         But I would point out that we can *describe* elements using their atomic number: {tamler wejmaH Hut} for 'yttrium' etc. Nevertheless the *name* of yttrium is probably something different.

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      3. 

         E.T. September 2, 2025

         It makes sense, but it assumes a complete knowledge of the Standard Model from the moment quarks were first named, which is very unlikely. Theory doesn't definitely exclude a fourth generation, it is just that nobody currently has a model for it, since we have no reason to assume one. Please see my longer reply below as to why I still don't think this is a good naming system, even if it can be said to make sense.
   2. 

      Alan August 29, 2025

      Further describing {ngochjuH} "quark" is definitely a good strategy.
      The different flavors come in pairs of positively-charged {ruS} and negatively-charged {ngIng} quarks (plus associated antiquarks).
      The three (known) pairs come in increasingly heavier versions, so one might call the charm/strange pair {'ugh} "heavy" and the top/bottom pair {'ughqu'} "really heavy". That's also true of the electron/muon/tau and their neutrino counterpart leptons (and their antiparticles), which is a nice feature of the Standard Model.

      However, the Standard Model doesn't actually rule out even heavier versions of everything, so defining them by heaviness might not be appropriate. I would just number the "generations":

      up: ngochjuH [wa'] ruS
      down: ngochjuH [wa'] ngIng
      charm: ngochjuH cha' ruS
      strange: ngochjuH cha' ngIng
      top: ngochjuH wej ruS
      bottom: ngochjuH wej ngIng

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   3. 

      E.T. September 3, 2025

      I'd expect that you can add {ngochjuH} for clarity, the way I might say "up-quark" when mentioning them without context, but I'd expect a shorter name in context, just like I'll just say "up" or "u" when talking about particle physics; the same way I might say {tera' jentu'} when I want to make it very clear I'm talking about a penguin, not a jentu', but will probably only say {jentu'} when telling about my (hypothetical) trip to Antarctica.
2. 

   E.T. September 2, 2025

   Since antimatter exists, I wouldn't define them by their charge. That can easily end up confusing.
   I definitely prefer the labelling by generations to calling them light/heavy, because, as Alan said, no part of the Standard Model says that there can't be more than three generations.

   However, that's also why I'm against labelling them by generations. All of the systems proposed here are from the point of view of people knowing about the "full" Standard Model (unless there really is a fourth generation, but let's ignore that for now). But seeing the way the flavours of quarks were discovered on Earth and why, it's unlikely Klingons just immediately came up with the six-quark, six-lepton model. On Earth, there were originally only three quarks proposed, up, down and strange (or sideways). The addition of the charm quark was only to preserve the symmetry (also because there were two leptons known at the time, but definitely at least three quarks), it took another decade for a charm-containing particle to be discovered (which was almost three decades after the first strange-containing particle was found). The bottom (or beauty) quark followed shortly, but the top (or truth) quark remained a theoretical speculation to retain symmetry until the 90s.
   I tell this story to show how unlikely it is that Klingons wouldn't have named these one by one as they were theoretically proposed or discovered. And seeing the mass differences (charm and top quarks are significantly heavier than strange and bottom quarks, respectively), it is very likely they would have discovered them in a similar order. There is no reason to assume that the Klingon naming scheme for quarks is any less chaotic than the human system. Unless they just numbered them in order of discovery. That I can see happening.

   Also, scientists are lazy. Most particle physicists don't even use the full names of the quarks, just the first letter. The IUPAP actually considers the names of the quarks to be u, d, s, c, t, b, with the words just being mnemonics. Even if the full names of the quarks are something like {ngochjuH wa' ruS}, I'd be willing to bet there is a shorter form as well. Because that is just too inconvenient. And, with the first two numbers being {wa'} and {cha'}, too easy to mishear in the noisy environment of a particle accelerator.

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      enru September 2, 2025

      I agree with this. Klingons might have gotten their names for quarks from the Hur'q for all we know.

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