"Here's an interesting way of Using Muons"

In the past month; a hidden passage was found in the great pyramids using something called a Muon tomography .

To begin to understand what muon tomography is we must know what are Muons; they are one of the fundamental subatomic particles and they are like electron with -1e charge, however they have much greater mass.

Muon tomography is a technique that uses cosmic ray muons to generate accurate 3D images of volumes/ reconstruct the internal structure of a (geological) body using information contained in the Coulomb scattering of the muons.

As a part of cosmic radiation, muons reaching on the Earth's surface are the decay products of collisions between cosmic rays and the Earth's atmosphere. They bombard the Earth at close to the speed of light and can penetrate deeply into solid objects.

Since muons are much more deeply penetrating than X-rays or gamma rays, muon imaging can be used with much thicker material or, with cosmic ray sources, larger objects. One example is commercial muon tomography used to image entire cargo containers to detect shielded nuclear material, as well as explosives or other contrabands.

Another example of muon tomography is the discovery of a hidden passage in the great pyramid, the corridor is nine meters long has been discovered close to the main entrance of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza, by placing detectors inside the pyramid the researchers were able to identify cavities inside the immensely large and dense structure without any digging or tunneling.

The discovery of using muons in such way is truly very fascinating; Moreover there are countless other advantages of using this method then the conventional methods for finding artifacts and hidden geological features. As first of all muons are naturally abundant so there is no fear of using them all. Furthermore; the apparatus uses much less power than other imaging techniques since they use natural probes, rather than relying on artificially generated signals. Which makes it sustainable and reliable.

Some of the other uses of Muon Tomography may include:

• Underground water monitoring: Muon tomography has been applied to groundwater and saturation level monitoring for bedrock in a landslide area as a response to major rainfall events. The measurement results were compared with borehole groundwater level measurements and rock resistivity.

• Glaciers: Underlying bedrock erosion and its boundary between glacier and bedrock could be successfully imaged using this methodology.
• Mining: Using this method deposits sites for uranium and such other materials can be easily found.
• Civil engineering: Muon tomography has been used to map the inside of big civil engineering structures, such as dams, and their surroundings for safety and risk prevention purposes. Muon tomography imaging was applied to the identification of hidden construction shafts located above the Alfreton Old Tunnel (constructed in 1862) in the UK.
• Nuclear reactors: Muon tomography was applied to investigating the conditions of nuclear reactors damaged by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and helped to confirm its state of near-complete meltdown, tomographic techniques can be effective for non-invasive nuclear waste characterization and for nuclear material accountancy of spent fuel inside dry storage containers. Cosmic muons can improve the accuracy of data on nuclear waste and Dry Storage Containers (DSC).
• Planetary science: Muography may potentially be implemented to image extraterrestrial objects such as the geology of Mars. Cosmic rays are numerous and omnipresent in outer space. Therefore, it is predicted that the interaction of the cosmic rays in the Earth’s atmosphere to generate pions/mesons and subsequently to decay into muons also occurs in the atmosphere of other planets.

Considering all the factors its safe to say that Muon tomography is convenient and reliable source for performing multiple tasks. I am hopeful to see the full potential of this method.

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References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon_tomography#

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/hidden-corridor-pyramid-giza-intl-scli-scn/index.html#:~:text=A%20hidden%20corridor%20nine%20meters,antiquities%20officials%20said%20on%20Thursday.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/2023/03/02/hidden-passage-discovered-in-great-pyramid-of-giza/

https://cms.cern/content/muon-tomography