gold-plated event
n.— «Unfortunately, as Dr. Weinberg pointed out, ordinary collisions also produce showers of the same particles coming out, and so the game has changed. Once upon a time, physicists would look for what they called “a gold-plated event.” “You looked at a bubble chamber and saw tracks and decays,” Dr. Weinberg recalled. “You knew what you were seeing: ‘Aha! This is the omega minus,’” referring to a famous particle whose discovery clinched the case for quarks in 1964.» —“At Fermilab, the Race Is on for the ’God Particle'” by Dennis Overbye New York Times July 24, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Imagine telling someone how to get to your home, but without using the name of your street, or any other street within ten miles. Could you do it? We take street names for granted, but these words are useful for far more, like applying for a job or...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski serves up a Common Bonds puzzle, in which the object is to guess the common idea in each of three things. For example, what’s the one word that connects a grade on a report card, USDA inspected beef, and an incline? This...