Harnessing The Power Of The Universe "Mayan Physics"

Active volcanoes, nuclear waste deposits, Mayan pyramids - there are lots of places physicists don't want to go in person, for fear of burning in in a river of magma, lethally and painfully failing to develop superpowers, or incurring the wrath of Cizin (Mayan god of death and winner of the "Most people sacrificed" award three millennia running). Such structures have a scale that laughs in the face of radar and can be so complicated that the best seismic imaging will tell you is "Yep, there's definitely stuff down there all right". Professor Schwitters of the University of Texas suggests using muons instead.

If you just asked "What's a muon?", then congratulations, you're part of the 99.99999 % of the population that aren't particle physicists. A muon is a high energy subatomic particle which can penetrate huge volumes of rock, making them perfect for imaging vast structures. The problem is that the only way humans can produce them is in huge particle accelerators like CERN or Fermilab. These things cost such a spectacular sum of money that it would probably be cheaper to build your own Mayan pyramid and look at the blueprints to see what's inside, and besides, building a particle accelerator into a live volcano sounds like a great way to convince Bond to shoot you. Erecting an atom-smasher around a Mayan temple, on the other hand, is a plot that the SciFi channel would dismiss as too stupidly ridiculous despite great lines like "Professor, the linear coil accelerators are haunted!"

But Professor Schwitter doesn't mess around with piddling little toys like 26 kilometer long accelerators that require the power of a small city. He's bringing a much bigger muon generator to bear - the universe. It's a fact that any kind of radiation you care to imagine is generated somewhere out there, and the only reason we aren't all triple-headed glow in the dark skeletons is that the cosmic rays bathing the Earth collide with the upper atmosphere producing all kinds of fancy subatomic particles. Including muons. Every square centimeter of the surface receives a complimentary muon per minute courtesy of stuff in space (you've gone through a fair few reading this far), and by planting detectors around the mayan pyramids the professor plans to build up a 3D model of the interior.

The key is that while muons can pass through solid matter, they can be deflected from their path - the more mass, the greater the deflection. In this way the detector data can build up a picture of where there is solid rock (more deflection) and empty chambers (less). Combining subatomic shenanigans, astrophysics and archeology in this way is one of the coolest crossing of concepts since the short-lived Trampoline Shark Boxing League, and is at least one positive side-effect of every subatomic physicist in the world standing around bored and twiddling their thumbs waiting for the Large Hadron Collider to come online. (Source: Daily Galaxy.com)