8 ms·

I'm not a chemist, but what do you mean it would disintegrate? Like it's literally disintegrating into smaller atoms?

• pknomad 4y ago
  Not a chemist either (took organic and baby pchem a while ago tho), but I believe he means it would just fall apart since there's no strong force or weak force to keep it together the way it would for a typical atoms. Muon's a fermion so it can't disintegrate into smaller atoms.
• fsh 4y ago
  The muon decays into a positron and a pair of neutrinos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon#Muon_decay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon#Muon_decay
  • gus_massa 4y ago
    The reaction would be Muon + Electron -> (Positron + Neutrino + Antinutrino) + Electron -> (Positron + Electron) + Neutrino + Antinutrino -> (Photon + Photon) + Neutrino + Antinutrino -> Photon + Photon + Neutrino + Antinutrino The Neutrino and Antineutrino would pass through you, the lab and the whole Earth, almost without interactions, so it's safe to ignore them. The photons will be very energetic and be actually Gamma Rays. Option 1) If it's a tiny amount like the one that can actually be produced, you will get a a few gamma ray. Option 2) If you can see the drop of liquid Mu_2 in the beaker, you will probably see a flash of gamma rays that will kill you and everyone in the lab. I'm too lazy to calculations but I guess an explosion of a few megatones (that is like a modern nuclear bomb). Also, perhaps many of the Electrons and Positrons will not colide immediately, and you would be showered also with some beta radiation. But the Positrons will colide after a short time and release the energy as gamma rays anyway. The exact amount of destruction of a drop of Mu_2 is a good question for https://what-if.xkcd.com/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/