varitron

plural varitrons

1. natural sciencesAn alleged subatomic particle with variable mass that Armenian physicists claimed to have discovered in the 1940s, but which was subsequently debunked.

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

   1955, Nuclear Science Abstracts - Issues 4344-8020, page 644

   3 more examples

   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.

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

   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.

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

   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...

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