From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Particle having real positive rest mass
The physics technical term
massive particle
refers to a massful
particle
which has
real
non-zero
rest mass
(such as
baryonic matter
), the counter-part to the term
massless particle
. According to
special relativity
, the velocity of a massive particle is always less than the
speed of light
.
[1]
When highlighting relativistic speeds, the synonyms
bradyon
(from
Greek
:
βραδ??
,
bradys
, “slow”),
tardyon
[2]
or
ittyon
[3]
are sometimes used to contrast with
luxon
(which moves at light speed) and hypothetical
tachyon
(which moves
faster than light
).
Dark matter
[
edit
]
Types of massive particles include
weakly interacting
and
stable
massive particles, which are hypothesized to constitute
dark matter
.
[4]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]