While many unstable particles, both fundamental and composite, can be produced in particle physics, only protons, neutrons (bound in nuclei) and the electron are stable, along with their antimatter counterparts and the photon. Everything else is short-lived, but if muons can be kept at high enough speeds, they might live long enough to forge a next-generation particle collider out of. (Credit: Contemporary Physics Education Project/CPEP, DOE/NSF/LBNL)
Particle physics needs a new collider to supersede the Large Hadron Collider. Muons, not electrons or protons, might hold the key.
If you want to uncover all the particles that fundamentally exist, your best bet is to smash particles together, under…
