Talk:Onium

Is this real?

Is this term really in use?

"Onium" as a suffix is, of course, regularly used. I never hear "onium" as a noun, though. I'd like to see a few citations.Geoffrey.landis (talk) 14:04, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

• The forms positronium and protonium seems to show a haplology rule :: "onon" becomes "on". Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:08, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Opening line

• @Headbomb: Your linguistic argument doesn't hold up. The term "muonium" was coined following the example of "positronium" which is also an onium despite the particle that gives it its name being called the "positron" not the "positr". In-fact the -onium suffix was retroactively derived from "positonium" and "muonium" in the first place; they set the precedent for the convention by creating the initial pattern. Additionally, muonium is already described as an onium in the article already (including the efn), or at least that's how it reads to me, so as without "an" the text appears to contradict itself. - Scyrme (talk) 00:49, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

To be clear, my reading of the efn is that it clarifies that not all onia follow the pattern implied by the (misleading) opening line; ie. that muonium, although an onium, is not a muon-antimuon onium. - Scyrme (talk) 01:05, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Muonium is not onium. This is clearly explained in this article, in muonium, and in true muonium. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:18, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

As I've already explained, I don't agree that this article does clearly explain that. I don't see where true muonium supposedly explains this. The section in muonium is entirely unsourced, and only explains things in terms of "normally" and "mostly" which are only casual observations, which can be explained just as easily by the otherwise expected names simply being taken - the same reason the muon-antimuon bound state is called terms like "mumuonium", "dimuonium", and "true muonium".

In-fact, in searching further to find something that might unambiguously support your case, I'm struggling to find an use of "onium" as a noun referring to these particles let alone defining it as a particle bound with "its" antiparticle as opposed to "an" antiparticle. The majority (all?) of the scholarly literature I could find using "onium" as a noun actually refers to onium ions suggesting that should be the primary topic for this term. Seems I'm not the only one: the term was called into question earlier by Geoffrey.landis (talk · contribs) way back in 2012.

The terminology I did find simply refers to "leptonic atoms", which would correspond to the wording "an" not "its" in the opening line. (Perhaps we should discuss moving the article to that title? The material about pionium would need to be moved elsewhere or it could just be deleted, given it is apparently unsourced and there's separate article all about them.)

I'd be happy to concede this if you know of an authority in the field that has made this an established convention. I'm not aware of any such convention being employed by IUPAP or IUPAC, although they have established the term "muonium" for Muonium with the symbol Mu. - Scyrme (talk) 15:14, 27 November 2021 (UTC)