Cosmic muon detector could find hidden A-bomb material
JUL 01, 2010
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.024469
Wired : Earth is constantly pelted by high-energy muons from outer space. To stop or even deflect the speedy particles, you need a lot of material; the denser and the higher up the periodic table, the better. Physicists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, CERN, and elsewhere realized they could use the muons to detect material for making nuclear bombs. The muons would pass easily through the walls of a thick metal container, but they’d be deflected by an ingot of uranium or plutonium, which are dense and have high atomic numbers. Having built a detector, which relies on making a map from the muons’ deflections, a CERN-based team has now put it through its first test. It passed.
© 2010 American Institute of Physics
