Producing the subatomic particles called muons is now a lighter lift than ever before.
Several teams of researchers have generated muons using small particle accelerators driven by lasers. Typically, enormous facilities are needed to accelerate particles and make muon beams. Like X-rays on steroids, muons can pass through solid materials and reveal what’s inside. So the feat opens future possibilities for portable scanners that could use muons to reveal contraband such as plutonium and uranium inside shipping containers.
“If you really want to penetrate through meters of concrete or stone or even metals, muons are the best particles to do that,” says Rajeev Pattathil of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot, England, who was not involved with the research.
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