varitron

English

Noun

varitron (plural varitrons)

1. (physics) An alleged subatomic particle with variable mass that Armenian physicists claimed to have discovered in the 1940s, but which was subsequently debunked.
   • 1955, Nuclear Science Abstracts - Issues 4344-8020, page 644:

     The mass of a varitron varies from 100 to 25,000 electron masses.

   • 1963 ·, Martin Caidin, Red Star in Space, page 52:

     The discovery of the varitron brought the brothers Alikhanov not only immediate fame, but considerable fortune as well in the form of a Stalin Prize First Class accompanied by 200,000 rubles.

   • 1964, George Paloczi-Horvath, The Facts Rebel: the Future of Russia and the West, page 65:

     This high official exercised "self-criticism" in his own name and that of Soviet science for this "gross mistake”, and denounced all those who tried to protect the varitron story against experimental evidence.

   • 2019, Vasily Grossman, translated by Robert Chandler and Yury Bit-Yunan, Stalingrad, page 215:

     These first flickering stars were perhaps giving birth in his mind to the thoughts of proton explosions, of developmental phases and cycles, of super-dense matter, of cosmic showers and storms of varitrons, of different theories of cosmogony, including his own, of instruments for recording invisible streams of stellar energy...