What is a muon in simple terms?

: an unstable lepton that is common in the cosmic radiation near the earth’s surface, has a mass about 207 times the mass of the electron, and exists in negative and positive forms.

What does a muon do?

Muons can help detect dangerous nuclear material and see into damaged nuclear power plants. Scientists use muons for archeological purposes to peer inside large, dense objects such as the pyramids in Egypt.

Why is it called muon?

A muon is a type of subatomic particle. The name is pronounced “myoo-on,” and comes from the Greek letter μ, which we spell “mu” and pronounce “myoo.” A muon is a type of particle very much like an electron. In fact, it is exactly the same as an electron – except heavier.

What is the difference between an electron and a muon?

Muons are about 200 times heavier than electrons; muons are about 100 MeV, whereas electrons are about 0.5 MeV. It follows that whereas an electron is stopped in the ECAL, a muon just ploughs through it and into the muon chamber, as illustrated by this cartoon from this blog post about the muon.

Why is the muon important?

Muons – unstable elementary particles – provide scientists with important insights into the structure of matter. They provide information about processes in modern materials, about the properties of elementary particles and the nature of our physical world.

How do muons behave?

Muons behave like tiny magnets, each with a north and south pole. The strength of that magnet is tweaked by transient quantum particles that constantly flit into and out of existence, adjusting the muon’s magnetism by an amount known as the muon magnetic anomaly.

Do muons reach Earth?

Muons are created when cosmic rays traveling through space strike molecules in the atmosphere, some 10 kilometers above Earth’s surface. Even moving at nearly the speed of light, a muon should only be able to travel about 700 meters before it decays, so you might think no muons could ever reach Earth. Not so!

How do you detect a muon?

Because muons can penetrate several metres of iron without interacting, unlike most particles they are not stopped by any of CMS’s calorimeters. Therefore, chambers to detect muons are placed at the very edge of the experiment where they are the only particles likely to register a signal.

What does muon mean?

Definition of muon. : an unstable lepton that is common in the cosmic radiation near the earth’s surface, has a mass about 207 times the mass of the electron, and exists in negative and positive forms.

What is the difference between a muon and a meson?

The key difference between muons and mesons is that muons are a type of elementary particles which have no substructure whereas mesons are a type of hadronic subatomic particles which have a pair of quark and anti-quark particle. Muons and mesons are two types of particles in matter.

What is a muon physics?

The muon is a fundamental particle that is part of the Standard Model of particle physics. It is a type of lepton particle, similar to the electron but with a heavier mass.

What is the lifespan of a muon?

The muon is an unstable subatomic particle with a mean lifetime of 2.2 μs, much longer than many other subatomic particles. Nov 5 2019