MUONS - SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
News: Scientists
use outer space particles to examine the fortress wall of Xi’an city
What's in the news?
● As
per a new study, researchers are examining the fortress wall of Xi’an, an
ancient city in China, by using tiny outer space particles that can penetrate
hundreds of meters of stone surfaces.
Key takeaways:
● Known
as muons, these particles have helped them find small density anomalies, which are potential safety hazards, inside
the wall.
Muons:
● Muons
are subatomic particles raining from
space.
● They
are created when the particles in Earth’s
atmosphere collide with cosmic rays - clusters of high-energy particles
that move through space at just below the speed of light.
● According
to Scientific American magazine, “about 10,000 muons reach every square meter
of the Earth’s surface a minute”.
Characteristics:
● These
particles resemble electrons but are 207
times as massive. Therefore, they are sometimes called “fat electrons”.
● Because
muons are so heavy, they can travel through hundreds of meters of rock or other
matter before getting absorbed or decaying into electrons and neutrinos. In
comparison, electrons can penetrate through only a few centimeters.
● Muons
are highly unstable and exist for
just 2.2 microseconds.