"Every second, somewhere between 10 and 100 muons - the unstable, heavy cousin of the electron - passes through your body. With a mean lifetime of 2.2 microseconds, you might think the ~100+ km journey to your hand would be impossible. Yet relativity makes it so, and the fact that these muons pass through your body are more than sufficient to prove it."
"Individual, subatomic particles are almost always invisible to human eyes, as the wavelengths of light we can see are unaffected by particles passing through our bodies. But if you create a pure vapor made out of 100% alcohol, a charged particle passing through it will leave a trail that can be visually detected by even as primitive an instrument as the human eye."
The Earth's atmosphere and surrounding environment bombard the body with atoms, molecules, photons, energetic particles, and infrequent neutrinos and antineutrinos. High-energy cosmic rays from stars, black holes, and galaxies strike the atmosphere and create particle showers that produce muons; roughly 10–100 muons per second traverse the human body. Muons have a mean lifetime of 2.2 microseconds but reach the surface because of relativistic time dilation and high velocities. Charged particles ionize media they traverse; in a pure alcohol vapor, these ionization tracks nucleate condensation, creating visible droplet trails detectable by the human eye.
Read at Big Think
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]