Word.ws English Dictionary

Q-ball

Q-ball noun: a charged soliton that represents the lowest possible energy state of its components and is therefore stable.

Noun (1)

Q-ball (plural Q-balls)

  1. A charged soliton that represents the lowest possible energy state of its components and is therefore stable.
    • Q-ball collisions are studied numerically on a two dimensional lattice for a range of Q-ball charges.2001, Tuomas Multamäki, “Q-ball Collisions in the MSSM”, in Strong and Electroweak Matter 2000, page 348
    • If you're going to fly inside Mercury's orbit and hurl a bomb into the sun to burst its Q-ball (non-topological soliton) into pieces, I suggest that home may require a theoretical solution.2008, Roger Ebert, Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2009, page 880

Noun (2)

Q-ball

  1. (slang) An illicit drug made up from quetiapine and cocaine.

Forms of Q-ball

pluralQ-balls

Origin of Q-ball

From Q (“charge”) + ball, coined by physicist Sidney Coleman. In physics, charge is often represented by the letter Q, and the soliton is spherically symmetric.

Questions about Q-ball

What does Q-ball mean?
Q-ball means a charged soliton that represents the lowest possible energy state of its components and is therefore stable.
What part of speech is Q-ball?
Q-ball is a noun.
What is the plural of Q-ball?
The plural of Q-ball is Q-balls.

Words near Q-ball in the dictionary

  1. Q+As
  2. q-analog
  3. q-analogs
  4. q-analogue
  5. q-analogues
  6. Q-ball
  7. Q-balls
  8. Q-boat
  9. Q-boats
  10. Q-car
  11. Q-carbon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Q-ball (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-Q-ball.ogg.

Cite this entry: “Q-ball.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/q-ball. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.