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W and Z particles, elementary particles that mediate, or carry, the fundamental force associated with weak interactions. The discovery of the W and Z particles at CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics) in Geneva, Switzerland, in the early 1980s was an important confirmation of electroweak theory, which unifies the electromagnetic and weak forces. The W and Z particles are quite massive for elementary particles; they are roughly 100 times as massive as the proton.
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