Tau
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from Tau (letter))
- For the village in Norway, please see Tau, Norway.
Tau (upper case Τ, lower case τ) is the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 300.
The lower-case letter τ is used as a symbol for:
- Torque, the rotational force in mechanics.
- The elementary tauon particle in particle physics.
- The lifetime of a spontaneous emission process.
- The time constant in an RC circuit.
- A coefficient of correlation — see Kendall's tau.
- The Golden ratio 1.618... (although φ (phi) is more common)
- Tau in astronomy is a measure of opacity, or how much sunlight cannot penetrate the atmosphere
- Tau in biochemistry is a protein associated to microtubules
Other uses of Tau:
- Tau is the name of an island near Kilinailau, Greenwich Island, and Ocean Island.
- In Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 science fiction gaming universe, the Tau are an alien race.
- Tau is a symbol used from antiquity and is represented by a type of cross. There are those who accuse Christ of being the pirate of this ancient symbol, but it did not become a symbol of Christianity until a later date. As with Christianity, other ancient societies who used the "Tau" symbol also evolved its use to represent resurrection, reincarnation and blood sacrifice.
- The prefix of many cosmic entities, fictional or not. Notably Tau Ceti Five from System Shock 2el:Ταυ
es:Tau fr:Tau nl:Tau ja:Τ pl:Tau pt:Τ fi:Tau zh:Τ
