"New Emergent Particle Acts as its Own Anti-Particle".
A layman will not know what "emergent particle" means. (I did not.) But they will at least know that the presence of an adjective implies it's not quite "a particle", and the adjective itself gives a hint to the meaning. If the layman is then piqued, they will get clarification in the article itself.
So, for example, a "hole" in a semiconductor lattice is emergent, but a phonon is quasi?
I suppose we would call an L4 Lagrangian point an emergent phenomenon and not a virtual mass (just because it can be orbited). For one thing, if we did a surface integral around the L4 point, of the gravitational field, we would find that there is no mass there; the net flux is zero.
I do not know, as I am not a particle physicist. I got "emergent" from the popular press article. The terms "virtual" and "quasi" already have meanings in the field, so my point was it would be further confusing to use their non-technical meanings when trying to explain it to a layman.
Comments
"New Emergent Particle Acts as its Own Anti-Particle".
A layman will not know what "emergent particle" means. (I did not.) But they will at least know that the presence of an adjective implies it's not quite "a particle", and the adjective itself gives a hint to the meaning. If the layman is then piqued, they will get clarification in the article itself.
You wrote the style guide for Wikipedia's mathematics articles, didn't you? ;)
(By which I mean, a balance between immediate understanding vs. links for detail >> primarily links for detail without immediate understanding)
Would "Virtual Particle" possibly be a more correct and explanatory term?
Sadly, no, as "virtual particle" has a different meaning. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle. The technical term for these, I believe is "quasiparticle": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle
So, for example, a "hole" in a semiconductor lattice is emergent, but a phonon is quasi?
I suppose we would call an L4 Lagrangian point an emergent phenomenon and not a virtual mass (just because it can be orbited). For one thing, if we did a surface integral around the L4 point, of the gravitational field, we would find that there is no mass there; the net flux is zero.
I do not know, as I am not a particle physicist. I got "emergent" from the popular press article. The terms "virtual" and "quasi" already have meanings in the field, so my point was it would be further confusing to use their non-technical meanings when trying to explain it to a layman.