SINCE 1828
muon
noun
mu·on
| \ ˈmyü-ˌän
\
\
Definition of muon
: an unstable lepton that is common in the cosmic radiation near the earth's surface, has a mass about 207 times the mass of the electron, and exists in negative and positive forms
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Other Words from muon
muonic
\ myü-ˈä-nik
\
adjective
\
adjective
Examples of muon in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Harmless in small amounts, muons are 200 times heavier than electrons and can penetrate hundreds of feet of solid rock without interacting. — Jill Kiedaisch, Popular Mechanics, "Exploding Stars Might Have Brought an End to the Prehistoric Megalodon," 14 Dec. 2018 Scientists discovered in 1912 that subatomic particles — the building blocks of matter, such as protons, electrons, muons, neutrinos, and quarks — hit the Earth every day. — Brian Resnick, Vox, "10 science stories in 2018 that made us go, “Whoa, that’s awesome”," 18 Dec. 2018 After a supernova, everything on Earth would have been exposed to 20 times the normal muon load. — Jill Kiedaisch, Popular Mechanics, "Exploding Stars Might Have Brought an End to the Prehistoric Megalodon," 14 Dec. 2018 Travelling at close to the speed of light, muons shower Earth from all angles. — Elizabeth Gibney, Scientific American, "Muons: The Little-known Particles Helping to Probe the Impenetrable," 28 May 2018 There are three types of antineutrino just as there are three types of regular neutrino—electron, muon, and tau. — Avery Thompson, Popular Mechanics, "New Experiment Hints at Why the Universe Is Made of Something Rather Than Nothing," 8 Aug. 2016 The MiniBooNE experiment shoots a beam of muon neutrinos toward a giant oil tank. — Natalie Wolchover, Washington Post, "Evidence for a new fundamental particle thrills and baffles physicists," 18 June 2018 This would give an additional path by which muon neutrinos produced in the decays could oscillate into electron neutrinos, having spent a short bit of time as sterile neutrinos in between. — John Timmer, Ars Technica, "Weird neutrino excess won’t go away, hints at new physics," 8 June 2018 Neutrinos come in three types — muon neutrinos, tau neutrinos and electron neutrinos. — NBC News, "This bold experiment aims to solve one of the biggest mysteries in science," 8 May 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'muon.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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