A fairly straightforward question: quantum physicists divide the world into two categories of things, fermions and bosons. What’s your favorite object having integer spin?
Superpositions of answers, while allowed in properly symmetrized wavefunctions, are not valid responses to this poll.
Not showing photons much love here. Mesons, either, for that matter, but I can forgive the atomi-centrism.
Though I have to admit I kind of like gravitons. They keep me grounded.
atomi-centrism
Neutral atomi-centrism at that. Three of the offered choices are alkali metals, which have a tendency to lose an electron (and as ions they would be fermions).
Is this like 39 being people’s favourite prime that isn’t a prime?
Nevermind. I just got it with Eric’s comment.
Embarrassing for a (failed) chemist to forget the electrons.
In that case I’ll say C60 and prepare to be corrected on my poor understanding of physics.
Voted for “Huh? Where’s the Z?”, but really my vote is for the photon.
Feynmanium, because I’ve found it useful in my Science Fiction to ask: “What are the chemical consequences of having an element, with an atomic number above 137, whose 1s electrons must travel faster than the speed of light? Is Feynmanium the last chemical element that can physically exist?”
I’ll just go along with whatever everyone else says.
There is a third category besides fermions and boson, the so-called anyons (actually fermions and bosons are subsets of anyons, in some sense). Of course they can only exist in two dimensions, but they contain very rich physics.
My favorite particles are among non-Abelian anyons, in particular I like the “Majorana fermion” (NOT a fermion, also called an “Ising anyon”) which exist as zero-modes bound to vortices in p-wave superconductors, some super fluids and other related systems. (They are very close to be experimentally realized, very hot subject these days). These Majorana “fermions” are their own anti-particles, in a simplified sense.
By the way, I voted “Some other isotope I will identify in a comment”.
Since the question is “What’s your favorite object having integer spin?”, I have taken the freedom to pick a integer spin object which is not a isotope in the usual sense.
My pick is spin triplet Cooper pairs!
Is Feynmanium the last chemical element that can physically exist?
According to Wikipedia, if you take the finite size of the nucleus into account you can get up to Z ~ 173 before electron-positron pair production kicks in. They refer to this 2008 review article in Am. J. Phys. as the source for that claim. The review article in question quotes that result, with citations to five papers having publication dates ranging from 1940 to 1971.
Ditto the atomi-centrism. Photons all the way!
Carbon 12!
The basis of all the natural complexity.
They all look the same to me.
Um, tungsten-184. I hope that works. I’m too much of a chemist to understand, but too much of a sucker for polls too.
Gotta be the photon. It’s the only low energy, observable one which allows superpositions of different boson numbers – and all the joy that brings.
Where’s all the gauge bosons?
Gauge bosons get plenty of press as it is. It’s time that bosonic atoms got some love.