HIGH-ENERGY PHYSICS:
Physicists Dream of a Muon Shot
Alexander Hellemans
A group of physicists considering designs for future particle accelerators has embraced the muon, a pointlike, negatively charged particle 207 times more massive than the electron. Muons have never before been used as accelerator projectiles. But they and their positively charged antiparticles promise the clean collisions of electrons without their wasteful synchrotron radiation. As a result, they may lead to a cheaper successor to the Large Hadron Collider, a massive accelerator now being built at CERN.