alpha particle

4 definitions found

alpha particle - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :

  alpha particle \alpha particle\ (Physics & Chem.)
     a particle emitted at high velocity from certain radioactive
     substances. It is identical to the helium nucleus, consisting
     of two protons and two neutrons. Rays of such particles are
     called alpha rays.
     [Webster 1913 Suppl. +PJC]

alpha particle - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :

  alpha particle
      n 1: a positively charged particle that is the nucleus of the
           helium atom; emitted from natural or radioactive isotopes

alpha particle - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  bit rot
  alpha particle
  bit decay
  
     <jargon> A hypothetical disease the existence of which has
     been deduced from the observation that unused programs or
     features will often stop working after sufficient time has
     passed, even if "nothing has changed".  The theory explains
     that bits decay as if they were radioactive.  As time passes,
     the contents of a file or the code in a program will become
     increasingly garbled.
  
     People with a physics background tend to prefer the variant
     "bit decay" for the analogy with particle decay.
  
     There actually are physical processes that produce such
     effects (alpha particles generated by trace radionuclides in
     ceramic chip packages, for example, can change the contents of
     a computer memory unpredictably, and various kinds of subtle
     media failures can corrupt files in mass storage), but they
     are quite rare (and computers are built with error detection
     circuitry to compensate for them).  The notion long favoured
     among hackers that cosmic rays are among the causes of such
     events turns out to be a myth.
  
     Bit rot is the notional cause of software rot.
  
     See also computron, quantum bogodynamics.
  
     [Jargon File]
  
     (1998-03-15)
  

alpha particle - Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 :

  33 Moby Thesaurus words for "alpha particle":
     Kern, NMR, antibaryon, antilepton, antimeson, atomic nucleus,
     atomic particle, aurora particle, baryon, beta particle, electron,
     elementary particle, heavy particle, lepton, meson, mesotron,
     neutron, nuclear force, nuclear magnetic resonance,
     nuclear particle, nuclear resonance, nucleon, nucleosynthesis,
     nucleus, photon, proton, radioactive particle, radion,
     solar particle, strangeness, strong interaction, triton,
     valence electron