Talk:3043: Muons

Article needs improvement by somebody with a clear understanding of special relativity, and somebody with a clear understanding of muons. Are there actually two classes of muons or is it a joke? 172.68.55.81 22:19, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

No, not two classes; see Figure 5 on p. 3 here. 172.70.206.243 01:43, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

It sounds possibly like the article and comic together are saying that the muons we measure on earth are those that were going so fast that their time and distance are stretched so that they do not decay before reaching us. That non-relativistic muons decayed in the upper atmosphere. 162.158.63.84 03:13, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Correct, even if their velocities are not bimodal, you can absolutely divide them into two classes based on whether they decay before reaching the surface. I am pretty sure that's what's intended here. 172.68.23.136 03:42, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

I websearched around and found an old video from COSMUS showing an air shower with differently colored particles flying off. It looks like the COSMUS site is broken nowadays, but in archive.org I found it mentioned that the muons were red in the video. I saw some red particles decaying quickly like the behavior of smoke or fire or steam, and others firing toward the ground. I added a first paragraph with what I learned exploring. I'm sad the COSMUS site from the university of chicago seems down for years. They publicly modeled so many air showers and more. 162.158.159.189 04:26, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Fed the comic image into two AIs: Gemini and Claude. These are their explanations; please tell me which is better:

Gemini:

This xkcd comic (#2885) is a humorous take on the concept of time dilation from Einstein's theory of special relativity, specifically as it applies to muons.

Here's a breakdown:

The Setup: The comic explains that muons, subatomic particles created in the upper atmosphere, have very short lifespans. Normally, they would decay before reaching the Earth's surface. However, because they travel at speeds close to the speed of light, time dilation occurs.

Time Dilation: According to special relativity, time passes slower for objects moving at high speeds relative to a stationary observer. This means that from our perspective on Earth, the muons' internal clocks tick slower, allowing them to travel further before decaying.

The Joke: The comic takes this scientific concept and applies it to pronunciation. The presenter is shown drawing out the word "muons" ("MUUUUUUOOOONS") to emphasize the elongated time experienced by the fast-moving particles.

The Punchline: The caption "PHYSICS TIP: REMEMBER TO ADJUST YOUR PRONUNCIATIONS TO ACCOUNT FOR TIME DILATION" is the punchline. It's a humorous exaggeration, suggesting that we should literally pronounce words differently depending on the relative speed of the objects they describe.

In essence, the comic is a clever play on words that combines a complex physics concept with a mundane everyday activity (pronunciation). It highlights the counterintuitive nature of special relativity in a lighthearted way.

Here's why this might be tricky to explain on explainxkcd:

It's concise: The joke is very compact and doesn't require a lot of background information beyond a basic understanding of time dilation.

It's visual: The drawn-out "MUUUUUUOOOONS" is crucial to the humor, and it's difficult to fully capture that in a purely textual explanation.

It's somewhat self-explanatory: The comic itself does a good job of setting up the joke and delivering the punchline.

Dunno why it thinks this is comic 2885.

Claude:

The comic is explaining how muons (subatomic particles) created in the upper atmosphere are able to reach Earth's surface despite their short half-lives.

The humor comes from the way "muons" is written with stretched-out letters ("MUUUUUOOOOONS"), which is a play on time dilation in special relativity.

Time dilation is a real physics phenomenon where time moves slower for objects moving at very high speeds relative to a stationary observer. This is why fast-moving muons can survive longer than their normal half-life would suggest - from their perspective, due to time dilation, less time has passed.

The comic suggests, as a "physics tip," that you should stretch out your pronunciation of words to account for time dilation - as if the word itself experiences the same relativistic effects as the particle it describes.

It's a particularly nerdy physics joke because it combines accurate physics (muons really do reach the surface due to time dilation) with a playful misapplication of the concept to human speech. The stick figure appears to be teaching or presenting this concept, complete with what looks like equations on a board, making it feel like a legitimate physics lesson with a humorous twist.

This is characteristic of xkcd's style of humor, which often combines accurate scientific concepts with absurdist interpretations.

 -- AK24Ammit (talk)  (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Claude's is better, by far. 172.70.215.54 01:49, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

The point is that we observe muons that have time slowed down coming from the sky. Cueball is differentiating normal muons from muons that appear to have time slowed down for them, by slowing down his speech when referring to the slowed muons. It's a strange idea, refering to something that has time slowed for it. It's not something one often does outside fantasy. 162.158.158.168 04:41, 28 January 2025 (UTC)