gluon

noun

Etymology: From glue + -on. From being a particle (suffix "-on") that "glues" (attracts) together particles that feel the force carried by the gluon. Coined by American physicist Murray Gell-Mann in 1962.

1. A massless gauge boson that binds quarks together to form baryons, mesons and other hadrons and is associated with the strong nuclear force.

   “Naive realism might ask today: Tell me what space is in itself, not in terms of other things. Tell me what a gluon is at bottom, or a neutrino, or a charge.”

   “The so-called spin crisis has had important effects beyond simply confronting theorists with a particularly sharp challenge to their incomplete understanding of quantum chromodynamics, the underlying field theory of quarks and the gluons that mediate their strong interactions.”