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What process create leptons?
Explain which leptons are created natural and which ones are artificially created.
1. electron and neutrino
2. muon and neutrino
3. tau and neutrino
1. electron and neutrino
2. muon and neutrino
3. tau and neutrino
voted interesting: bugsi
answers (1)
1. Some electrons were formed during the Big Bang from the combination of high-energy photons. Electrons are also formed during Beta decay of Neutrons. Electrons are also formed during the decay of Tau Leptons. Electrons are also formed from the decay of Muons. It is also thought that electrons can be created at the event horizon of a Black Hole. As far as I can tell, all of these are naturally occurring events.
2. Muons are formed from pion decay in the upper atmosphere, where the pions are created from the collisions of cosmic rays with nucleons in the upper atmosphere. Muons are much like an electron but around 200 times more massive. Muon beams are produced by physicists by colliding hadrons at high energies to produce pion beams that quickly decay to muon beams over short distances. Thus, muons are produced naturally and artificially.
3. Tauons are produced by colliding positrons and electrons at high energies in a particle accelerator. Tauons are also much like electrons but around 3477 times more massive. I had the pleasure of directly asking Martin Perl (who won the Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of the Tau) where the extra mass comes from. His answer was very simple, and went something like this:
"You're accelerating particles to extremely high energies in the particle accelerator, which uses enormous amounts of electric energy to power the apparatus. There's a huge amount of energy going into the collision of the particles near the speed of light, and as Einstein showed with E=Mc^2; energy *is* mass (and mass *is* energy), so the extra mass of the Tau comes from the energy going into the accelerator apparatus."
(And then the Tau decays and it's gone.) So Tau leptons are produced artificially, which doesn't preclude the possibility that they could be produced naturally as well, but they decay in 2.9x10^-13 seconds. For natural creation of Tauons, you'd need to find a naturally occurring source of high energy hadron collisions, perhaps near the event horizon of a black hole or during the supernova explosion of a star, but no Tau particles produced in those situations would survive for us to experience them on Earth, so all Tauons that we experience are produced artificially.
4. All of the neutrinos are produced in beta decay, which is a natural process.
2. Muons are formed from pion decay in the upper atmosphere, where the pions are created from the collisions of cosmic rays with nucleons in the upper atmosphere. Muons are much like an electron but around 200 times more massive. Muon beams are produced by physicists by colliding hadrons at high energies to produce pion beams that quickly decay to muon beams over short distances. Thus, muons are produced naturally and artificially.
3. Tauons are produced by colliding positrons and electrons at high energies in a particle accelerator. Tauons are also much like electrons but around 3477 times more massive. I had the pleasure of directly asking Martin Perl (who won the Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of the Tau) where the extra mass comes from. His answer was very simple, and went something like this:
"You're accelerating particles to extremely high energies in the particle accelerator, which uses enormous amounts of electric energy to power the apparatus. There's a huge amount of energy going into the collision of the particles near the speed of light, and as Einstein showed with E=Mc^2; energy *is* mass (and mass *is* energy), so the extra mass of the Tau comes from the energy going into the accelerator apparatus."
(And then the Tau decays and it's gone.) So Tau leptons are produced artificially, which doesn't preclude the possibility that they could be produced naturally as well, but they decay in 2.9x10^-13 seconds. For natural creation of Tauons, you'd need to find a naturally occurring source of high energy hadron collisions, perhaps near the event horizon of a black hole or during the supernova explosion of a star, but no Tau particles produced in those situations would survive for us to experience them on Earth, so all Tauons that we experience are produced artificially.
4. All of the neutrinos are produced in beta decay, which is a natural process.
source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron#Formation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Lepton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino
Interview with Martin Perl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron#Formation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Lepton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino
Interview with Martin Perl
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That was a cool answer, an energy matter transformer.
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