Frank Wilczek - Bosons Quotes

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When two identical 3He atoms collide... the interference is destructive. Particles that behave like 3He atoms are called fermions, short for "particles obeying Fermi–Dirac statistics."... while bosons imitate one another... the "identity force" between fermions acts like a repulsion, and the probability of finding a fermion at some point in space is reduced if some of its identical siblings are nearby.... It is the repulsive identity forces between electrons that support white dwarf stars... against their own gravity.

Frank Wilczek
Particles that, like 4He, show constructive interference are said to be bosons—a shorthand term for "particles obeying Bose–Einstein statistics." …One way to recognize bosons is their tendency to imitate one each other.... the presence of one boson increases the chance that another of its identical siblings will also appear in the same spot. There's an attraction between them. We will speak... of an attractive identity force drawing together identical bosons. Lasers are a spectacular example...

Frank Wilczek
If grand unified theories are correct, we ought to be able to derive the relative power of the strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions at accessible energies from their presumed equality at much higher energies. When this is attempted, a wonderful result emerges.... in the form first calculated by Howard Georgi, Helen Quinn, and Steven Weinberg... The couplings of strong-interaction gluons decrease, those of the [weak interaction] W bosons stay roughly constant, and those of the [electromagnetic interaction] photons increase at short distances [or high energies]—so they all tend to converge, as desired.

Frank Wilczek
There is a simple rule for composite objects, such as nuclei or atoms. The rule is that if such an object contains an odd number of fermions, the composite object is a fermion. Otherwise, it is a boson.... this simple rule doesn't care at all about the number of bosons in the composite object.

Frank Wilczek