Learn bits
Science & Tech.
Mahesh

07/02/23 09:02 AM IST

Muons

In 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 called muons that can penetrate hundreds of metres of stone surfaces.
Muons
  • Muons are subatomic particles raining from space.
  • The muon was discovered as a constituent of cosmic-ray particle “showers” in 1936 by the American physicists Carl D. Andersonand Seth Neddermeyer.
  • 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.
  • It has two forms, the negatively charged muon and its positively charged antiparticle.
  • These particles resemble electrons but are 207 times as massive. Therefore, they are sometimes called “fat electrons”.
  • Muons are so heavy, they can travel through hundreds of metres of rock or other matter before getting absorbed or decaying into electrons and neutrinos.
  • They are highly unstable and exist for just 2.2 microseconds.
Muon Tomography
  • Although muon tomography was first used in the 1960s, it has only recently gained widespread use among researchers, particularly in archaeology.
  • It is conceptually similar to X-ray but capable of scanning much larger and wider structures, owing to the penetration power of muons.
  • As these high-energy particles are naturally produced and ubiquitous, all one needs to do is place a muon detector underneath, within or near the object of interest.
  • The detector then tracks the number of muons going through the object from different directions, to form a three-dimensional image.
Source- Indian Express

More Related Current Affairs View All

05 May

Key objectives of caste count

'The Union Cabinet has decided that the next Census will include questions on caste to its enumeration of India’s population, for the first time in almost a century. ' T

Read More

05 May

2 new genome-edited rice varieties

'Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan recently released two genome-edited varieties of rice, the first achievement of its kind in the country.' These two varieties, which

Read More

05 Mar

First-ever comprehensive survey of India’s river dolphins

'Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the results of the first-ever comprehensive population estimation of riverine dolphins – Gangetic and Indus dolphins – done in In

Read More

India’s First Ai-Driven Magazine Generator

Generate Your Custom Current Affairs Magazine using our AI in just 3 steps