The mu mesons generated by cosmic rays just outside Earth's atmosphere travel to Earth at speeds approaching the speed of light. ██ ██████ █████████ ██ ███ ███████████ ████████ ███ ██████ ██ █████ ██ ██████ █████████ ██ ███ ██████████ █████████ █████ ██ ████ ████ ████ ████ ██ █████ ███ █ ██ █████ ██ ██████ ████ ████ ███████ ███████ ██████████ ██ ███ █████████ █████████ ██ ██████ ██ ██ ██████ █████████ ███████ ███ ██████████ ██ ██████ ███████████ ███ █████ ██ █████ █████████ █████ ██ ████ ██ ████ ██ ██ ███ ███████████ ████ ██ ██████ ██████ ████ █████ ███ █████████████ ██ ███ ██████ ██ ████████ ██ ███████ ███████████ ██ ██████ ██████ ██ ██████ ████ ███ █████ ██ █████ ████████
Let’s learn about mu mesons! These mesons originate just outside Earth’s atmosphere, and shoot to Earth nearly at light speed. There are also some lab-generated mesons, which are at rest, but decay faster than the time it takes for an atmospheric meson to travel to Earth. If atmospheric mesons decayed that fast, we would expect to only pick up about 1/100th as many as we do using equipment on Earth (because they would almost all decay during the journey).
Based on the actual number of mu mesons detected, we can infer that mesons moving near light speed decay more slowly than mesons generated in the lab at rest.
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