{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Field Guide to Particle Physics","title":"The Neutral Sigma Baryon","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":391,"description":"The Field Guide to Particle Physics : Season 2https://pasayten.org/the-field-guide-to-particle-physics©2022 The Pasayten Institute cc by-sa-4.0The definitive resource for all data in particle physics is the Particle Data Group: https://pdg.lbl.gov.The Pasayten Institute is on a mission to build and share physics knowledge, without barriers! Get in touch.The Neutral Sigma BaryonsIntroductionWeighing in at 1192 MeV, the middle-weight sigma baryon is also the the electrically neutral one.The Sigma Baryons are a trio of strange, slightly heavy cousins to everyday particles like the proton and the neutron. We’ve already talked at length about the charged Sigma baryons. Today, we’re focusing on their electrically neutral sibling, Sigma Zero.While the decay resistant charged sigma baryons - with their unusually long lifetimes -  certainly qualify as “strange” particles, the sigma zero feels far less strange. At least at first.The Sigma Zero decays rapidly. Tens of trillions of times faster than its charged siblings Sigma Plus or Minus. If you’re into really small numbers, or just to measure time in seconds, that’s a decimal point followed by 19 zeroes before you get 7 and then a four. 0.000000000000000000074 secondsThat’s too short a time for us to fathom, but its about right for an unstable particle that heavy.Remember, it is STRANGE that the typical lifetime for strange baryons like Lambda Zero or the Charged Sigmas can be measured in nanoseconds. So why does the sigma zero baryon decay so quickly? OR why do we even consider it to be in the “Strange” family?DecaysOne reason to consider sigma zero “strange” is because it decays to a strange particle. Specifically, it decays, 100 percent of the time, to a lambda zero.In the process, the sigma zero throws out a photon - that is, a gamma ray - which itself might be hard to explain. You see, photons carry the electromagnetic force. Photons are passed around like baseballs between particles that have an electric charge....","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/ms0DEdWGHxRFV-iwboilxOVVMywvTeQXj3rWZPK1by4/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzE3MzEwLzE2MDk3/ODE1MDAtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}