In this lesson on Cosmic Muons, which is part of Unit 3 Area of Study 3 for VCE Physics, you’ll learn how to:
- explain why muons can reach Earth even though their half-lives would suggest that they should decay in the outer atmosphere.
Overview
Muons are unstable particles with a rest mass of 207 times that of an electron.
When high energy particles called cosmic rays (such as protons) enter the atmosphere from outer space, they create a cosmic ray shower of particles including muons that reach the Earth’s surface.
Muons created in these cosmic ray showers travel at 0.98c.
This breaks the laws of Newtonian physics but correlates to the ideas of special relativity.
The following video will break down this concept further.
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