In the 1970s, physicists predicted the discovery of two quarks called T and B for top and bottom. Some poetically-minded physicists argued that the T and B quarks should instead be called truth and beauty, but the terms top and bottom eventually won out. For the record, beauty lasts about one picosecond before decaying — at least when you’re talking about quarks. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Truth and Beauty Quarks”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. The other day I was part of a panel discussion at the University of San Diego
And the topic was language and beauty. And I learned something fascinating in the course of
Researching my remarks. I went to Merriam-Webster online and I looked up the word beauty and of
Course you see all the kinds of definitions that you would expect having to do with physical
Appearance or something graceful and ornamental, that kind of thing. But the fifth definition,
The last definition they had on there, they had simply the word bottom as a definition for beauty.
Bottom. Do you have any idea what that has to do with?
No. Some bells are ringing in my head, but I can’t nail them down.
They are.
Is this a term for the people who make barrels? No.
No.
I don’t know. It’s not about a human bottom.
No, it’s not about a human bottom. It’s about physics.
Okay.
In the 1970s, physics had predicted the existence of two quarks. Is this coming back to you?
Yes, yes.
Right? The top and bottom quark. They hadn’t discovered them, but they had predicted their existence.
And some of them were calling them T and B for top and bottom.
But there was a movement among some physicists to call those two predicted quarks truth and beauty rather than top and bottom.
And eventually, Top and Bottom won out.
Yes, I heard those for the very first time in Stephen Hawking’s book, the book that made him a household name.
Oh, is that right?
Yeah, Truth and Beauty.
And I must have been 11 or something when that book came out.
I just thought that was so cool that there in Merriam-Webster, the last definition for beauty is Bottom.
And for the record, in terms of science, beauty lasts about one picosecond before decaying.
And a picosecond is a thousandth of a billionth of a second.
So beauty is fleeting.
Yes, it is.
It’s very fleeting.
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