[lit-ideas] for simple FYI this is an elementary article from wikipedia
- From: "Adriano Palma" <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2011 14:13:43 +0200
** For Your Eyes Only **
** High Priority **
** Reply Requested by 9/11/2011 (Sunday) **
information, muons while having no "point" whatever the point is was
supposed to be,
have rather interesting properties
Like all elementary particles, the muon has a corresponding
antiparticle ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiparticle ) of opposite
charge but equal mass ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass ) and spin:
the antimuon (also called a positive muon). Muons are denoted by μ−
and antimuons by μ+
. Muons were previously called mu mesons, but are not classified as
mesons ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meson ) by modern particle
physicists (see History ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon#History )).
Muons have a mass ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass ) of 105.7 MeV/c2
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronvolt#As_a_unit_of_mass ), which
is about 200 times the mass of an electron. Since the muon's
interactions are very similar to those of the electron, a muon can be
thought of as a much heavier version of the electron. Due to their
greater mass, muons are not as sharply accelerated when they encounter
electromagnetic fields, and do not emit as much bremsstrahlung radiation
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremsstrahlung ). This allows muons of a
given energy to penetrate far more deeply into matter than electrons,
since the deceleration of electrons and muons is primarily due to energy
loss by the bremsstrahlung mechanism. As an example, so-called
"secondary muons", generated by cosmic rays (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_rays ) hitting the atmosphere, can
penetrate to the Earth's surface, and even into deep mines.
Because muons have a very large mass and energy compared with the decay
energy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_energy ) of radioactivity,
they are never produced by radioactive decay (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_decay ). They are, however,
produced in copious amounts in high-energy interactions in normal
matter, such as occur during certain particle accelerator (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_accelerator ) experiments
withhadrons ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadron ), and also naturally
in cosmic ray ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray ) interactions
with matter. These interactions usually first produce pi mesons (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_meson ), which then most often decay to
muon
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