Talk:Muon

message: Muons have a mass that is 207 greater than the electron
Units, please. 207 what? -- Merphant
:Ration bewteen quantities doesn't depend on the units and the units are given: (105.6 MeV) -- looxix 23:31 Apr 19, 2003 (UTC)
:Ok, sorry, I see. -- Merphant
Is it legal to use a textbook as the source for a Wikipedia article? - ElusiveByte 20:53, Sep 21, 2003 (UTC)
:Yes. Strait 16:37, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Generally, physicists will refer to either as a "muon."  Sometimes we'll even say "positive muon" and "negative muon" for clarity. -- SCZenz 17:07, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

text: Done. I did not add mass in kg because since the redefinition in 2019 there is a fixed conversion factor between kg and MeV.2001:1AE9:24B:4600:387B:91D:D61:16D3 (talk) 23:21, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I added the mass in kilograms, for two reasons. First, the kilogram is, after all, the official SI unit of mass. Second, if you search for "muon mass" on the source that is given as the reference for the mass values, i.e. the NIST website, and (among the search results) you click on the link for "muon mass" (as opposed to clicking on the link for "muon mass energy equivalent in MeV" or "muon mass in u"), you get a value in kilograms. --Reuqr (talk) 08:06, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Muon mass

message: http://www.aip.org/pnu/2002/split/600-1.html
Can someone who understands this fill us in on the wobble ? Wizzy…☎ 14:52, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
: I just added two external links to the main page, and I was hoping that someone that understands it better than I do would write about it or know of a link in wiipedia to more information.  Bubba73 15:58, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
::I understand it, but I may need to find (or draw) a picture to explain it more clearly than those pages do.  I'll put it on my list.  -- SCZenz 17:07, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Wobble

message: Took out the bit about CERN doing neutrino+proton-->dimuon work. Does anybody know the actual name of this experiment, if it existed? Similar work was done at Fermilab and SLAC, but I didn't turn up anything at CERN. -- Xerxes 22:30, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: CERN dimuon experiments

message: *The following analysis addresses how muons cooperate in the creation of the proton and it's integrated in the concepts of the Physics of Creation:
:Aspden, Harold (2003), Physics of Creation: The Ubiquitous Muon (Chapter 3), PhD. Physics - University of Cambridge [1953], U.K. [pdf file]
::I added a little while ago this online publication about the muon by a British Physicist, with vast  publication in these fields since the 60's. I am not acknowledge with any publication which disagrees with this author' statements/findings. However, it was removed by an user with the statement "remove crap biblical reference"!?. Please can you provide the readers whith your perspective of why, and where, does the author fails in the publication provided? Thank you in advance! --88.214.161.29 06:53, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. -- SCZenz 21:27, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Further reading 

message: Somewhere in the depths of my memory, I recall that Paul Dirac, in an interview, said that he was working on a theory which would make the muon "something like" an excited state of the electron. Does anyone know any further details?
Hair Commodore 19:04, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dirac and the muon 

message: Does anyone know why AntiMuon redirects here?
:Where else would it redirect? Or what would it say as a separate article? -- SCZenz 02:13, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It would say the same thing as this article, but time-reversed.216.80.110.88 (talk) 01:16, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  redirect 

message: I noticed that this article didn't have an Assessment or Importance rating.  I rated importance as "Top" (subject is a "must-have" for a print encyclopedia).  I put the Assessment as B, but I would appreciate if others have a more well-formed opinion (I am new at this).  By the way, I love the fabulous picture of the moon's shadow in muons.  HEL 17:02, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Ratings

message: "Since the production of muons requires an available COM frame energy of over 105 MeV, neither ordinary radioactive decay events nor nuclear fission and fusion events (such as those occurring in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons) are energetic enough to produce muons. Only nuclear fission produces single-nuclear-event energies in this range, but due to conservation constraints, muons are not produced."
This paragraph is confusing. First, it says that muons are not produced in nuclear fission, then the next sentence says they are. Which one is accurate? Duckyphysics (talk) 02:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Energy paragraph unclear 

message: Uhh, this page requires some serious copy-editing. There is some duplicated stuff and a lot of random external links directly in the article. They should be screened for redundancy, importance and availability (the only one given as ref-tag seems to be dead). --Pjacobi (talk) 00:26, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copy-editing 

message: Am I the only one that finds the font used for the elementary particles in text mode to be terrible? The simbol for the muonic neutrino might as well be v_u instead of \nu_\mu\, and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. there's got to be a better way to do it. I would change it myself if I knew how to do it. Dauto (talk) 04:45, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Font 

message: Isn't the arrow depicting every anti-particle supposed to be facing the opposite direction of normal time?
Please tell me if I've misunderstood something.. Thγmφ (talk) 19:42, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Muon Decay Diagram 

message: Is there any theory about why the muon/electron ratio is 207 and no other number?  Is it an even multiple?  Why can't there be a negative lepton with mass equal to, say, 100 times the electron?  Or is this an unsolved problem?
CharlesTheBold (talk) 03:38, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No one has a clue why the masses are what they are, and no it's not a integer multiple (assuming you mean integer and not even multiple).Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 04:00, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Theory? 

message: The word bremsstrahlung already includes the word radiation (it translates from german to "stopping radiation"), so "bremsstrahlung radiation" is redundant! Please change it to bremsstrahlung only!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Boeser wolf (talk • contribs) 17:46, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: For people who don't speak German, we need the redundancy. This is perfectly acceptable, like speaking of the WMF foundation, or a thorny Acacia tree. SBHarris 19:52, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

text: Or talking about the Rio grand river or GUT theory, etc... This is actually the correct way to do that kind of thing. Dauto (talk) 18:36, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  bremsstrahlung radiation 

message: In the side bar, under uses, weaponry is listed.
Nowhere in the article does it elaborate, and clicking on the link takes one to antimatter weapons.
Is this "use" of muons so far-fetched or has something actually feasible been proposed? If the former, it should probably be removed, and if the latter, it should be explained.
128.95.101.192 (talk) 00:40, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The sidebar appears to be a template with no parameters, so it's just blindly copying the template's contents without regard to the context of the current article. The use of muons as weaponry sounds very far-fetched, since in that very section, it says that the energy required to generate muons cannot be attained by nuclear reactors, and even nuclear weapons, which does attain to the required energies, does not produce muons due to other constraints. Given the difficulty of producing muons in the first place, and their short lifetimes, it seems inconceivable at the current state of technology that they can be used as weaponry.—Tetracube (talk) 00:46, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It's the antimatter navbox. Personally I don't think it should be on this article at all. I'll remove it unless someone objects. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 13:54, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weaponry? 

message: We need a section on cosmic muons and their flux. Something about momentum and angular distributions (cos2theta at zeroth order), the effect of the earth's magnetic field on different charges, etc. Erkcan (talk) 18:23, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cosmic muons 

message: In Muon Sources paragraph "nuclear cowes - what is that? Is that a mistake?
StuDreamer (talk) 10:32, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: A vandalism.SBHarris 21:15, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nuclear Cowes 

message: I am a little confused about the section on charge radius.  First, wouldn't the the Lamb shift raise the muon from the 2S to the 2P state and not from the 2P to the 2S as stated in this section?
Second, it is my understanding from reading the references that the 0.841 femtometer value for the proton charge radius is significantly at odds with the previous value.  By significantly at odds I meant that the previous value was known to four significant digits.  The recent experimental value (quoted to three significant figures here, but given to 5 significant figures in the reference) differs from the previously accepted value in the second significant digit which seems like a large discrepancy that needs to be explained.
TedEyeMD  —Preceding unsigned comment added by TedEyeMD (talk • contribs) 21:08, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Charge Radius 

message: It would be great to get information on how the word is pronounced, in the article. If anybody should describe this to me by exact comparisons with common English words, I would add a respective hint, according to the use of the international phonetic alphabet for English within Wikipedia. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 06:58, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I have already been advised on how to pronounce muon, and added a respective hint to the article. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 07:39, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation 

message: [] I advice Sbharris to look on sources before altering things to which he is not accustomed – sorry, but I can testify that this is not the first instance. Moreover, the article explained why this exotic atom has a hydrogen chemistry, not one of a noble gas. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 22:14, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I see that. In that case, the WP article should carefully explain that somebody has proposed that muonic He be called H-4.1 strictly on the basis of chemical behavior, rather than physical construction (since the latter, of course, shows that it's still helium). The idea is that the muon screens one nuclear charge so it "looks like" hydrogen. But classifying things according to their chemistry results in silliness like trying to write muonium as H-0.11 (even though it's not a hydrogen atom or any kind of atom), which this source also does (I don't care if they do it-- it's not standard notation). Worse still, if you follow this train logically, muonic hydrogen must be written "n-1.1" or "neutronium-1.1" since the muon screens the proton's charge, so it looks like a neutron. Do you want to write muonic H as neutronium-1.1? Really? SBHarris 01:48, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  No, I would prefer instead to write the 4He+ +  composite as 4(Hμ×He) and the muonic hydrogen as Hμ, or Hμ×ne if you prefer uniformity. Unfortunately, my notation, just like your H-0.11, is original. Hydrogen-4.1 is not. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:27, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hydrogen-4.1 

message: The lede currentl has "with unitary negative electric charge of roughly −1 and a spin of ".  How is this roughly? (Am I missing a process that makes its measurement not exactly -1?) RJFJR (talk) 20:56, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Removed. The discussion pertains to elementary charge by any means. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:43, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Roughly? 

message: Thanks to  my attention was eventually attracted to this thoughtless crap. The people who stuck to very long particle colliders are accustomed to think that all subatomic particles are baryons, leptons, and various bosons (such as mesons, fundamental forces, and the Higgs). It is not true: there are also many unstable atomic nuclei with lifetimes, usually, much longer than of the muon. Since there is no  atom,  excluded the neutron from atomic nuclei although its flavour lies in their plane. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:43, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: @talk To necro-bump, the content seems clear enough to me, but I fixed it. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 20:41, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  The only longer lifetime for an unstable subatomic particle is that for the free [[neutron]] 

message: On what possible basis can it be claimed that muons are non-ionizing radiation? Every detection method is based directly (gas-wire tubes) or indirectly (scintillators) on muons ionizing matter - so how can it be described as non-ionizing? I think the description should be removed from the section on muon radiography and tomography.198.81.129.195 (talk) 16:31, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-ionizing? 

message: In the Muon Decay section, it states 
:\Gamma=\frac{G_F^2 m_\mu^5}{192\pi^3}I\left(\frac{m_e^2}{m_\mu^2}\right),
where I(x)=1-8x-12x^2\ln x+8x^3-x^4. This obviously means x=\frac{m_e^2}{m_\mu^2}
However, someone added  x=2E_e/{m_\mu}c^2 , which is inconsistent with previous formula.
Louis925 (talk) 09:52, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Typo in the Muon Decay Rate Formula 

message: The first sentence in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon#Muon_sources reads "On Earth, most naturally occurring muons are created by quasars and supernovas, which consist mostly of protons, many arriving from deep space at very high energy".
The given source is available online: http://www.kfki.hu/~matyasm/books/Caroll_Sean_Spacetime.pdf But I can't find the reference on p204.
Besides: I'm not sure what the aim of the sentence is and I think it is easy to misunderstand this sentence. I read the statements: 'Quasars and supernovas consist mostly of protons' and (this is how I understand the sentence) 'most muons  come from deep space at very high energies' 
To this I'd say: First: "mostly consist" is not defined. 'Supernovae consist mostly of neutrinos.' would be a true statement (energy wise). Second: At least it is easy to misunderstand. Imo it's wrong as it's written there.
For these reasons I have substituted the complete sentence with:
"Muons arriving on the Earth's surface are created indirectly as decay products of collisions of cosmic rays with particles of the Earth's atmosphere."
--MartinFleck (talk) 14:20, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quoted source does not contain the relevant information, and unclear sentence 

message: I came here after learning about "scan pyramids". Could something be added about Muon detectors used in scanning large structures? Maybe there's another article, don't know can't find it.
Nibinaear (talk) 14:17, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: See muon tomography — dukwon (talk) (contribs) 14:41, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Muon Detectors

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Muon. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060902054947/http://www.npl.uiuc.edu/exp/mulan/ to http://www.npl.uiuc.edu/exp/mulan/
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20020325192213/http://meg.psi.ch/ to http://meg.psi.ch/
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 16:29, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Why can't Muons be used for sending orders to submarines?  If this could be done, it seems like a much better mechanism vs. VLF or satellite comms.? 139.138.6.121 (talk) 08:35, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Submarine communication 

message: I am not a physicist, so I would not wish to edit this article myself, but should this article point out that on the BBC news on 7 April 2021, it was reported that scientists in the United States believed that
they had found evidence for a new force in nature, because they observed that muons spun round more quickly than predicted? Rollo August (talk) 20:51, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I also came here after reading this! No Swan So Fine (talk) 08:38, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Popular press breathless hype on  confirmation of previous Brookhaven unexplained result. The search is ongoing.Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 11:13, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: New force in Nature

message: I can't find this information in the article.150.227.15.253 (talk) 20:32, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: it’s right there in the lede: “These interactions usually produce pi mesons initially, which almost always decay to muons.“ Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 02:23, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  How are muons produced in the lab? 

message: Recent edit by Muon2233 introduced a confusing sentence:
::... they showed that the muons from cosmic rays were decaying within being captured by atomic nuclei, ...
I think they wanted something like "were decaying even after being captured by atomic nuclei" when that was unexpected for the Yukawa particle? But I am not a physicist and such text makes me happy about that.
Farther on in the article there is:
::The difference, in part, was that mu mesons did not interact with the nuclear force, as pi mesons did (and were required to do, in Yukawa's theory).
And surrounding commentary might help rewrite the confusing sentence.
Shenme (talk) 19:20, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry there is indeed a typo in the sentence I introduced, I meant "...they showed that the muons from cosmic rays were decaying WITHOUT being captured by atomic nuclei...". This is indeed consistent with the later sentence. Muon2233 (talk) 20:29, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing (but not wrong?) 

message: The article says "the mass difference between the muon and the set of its decay products is small, providing few kinetic degrees of freedom for decay." but the most common muon decay products are an electron and neutrinos. Mass of an electron is 1/200 of a muon and neutrinos can't clearly fill the gap in mass difference unless there are millions of them so this sentence doesn't seem right. Or I'm missing something super obvious? (e.g. the energy difference is high if you compare to their mass but it's still small? 200MeV is not small though) Ladsgroupoverleg 00:00, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradiction? 

message: Re the following statement, which appears just above subsection "Muonic atoms":
  "More generally in the Standard Model, all charged leptons decay via the weak       interaction and likewise violate parity symmetry."
Electrons are charged leptons, but according to [1] are thought to be stable.  
Is there some subtlety here that is not mentioned or perhaps taken for granted that the reader appreciates?  I am very far from expert in this topic, but it was unclear to me, perhaps to others as well, how this statement could be entirely accurate exactly as written. 
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron Phlegman9 (talk) 00:45, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this statement about charged lepton decay correct?