More stuff related to the sun!

So it turns out, in a rare twist of events that doesn’t involve lasers, that scientists have determined that the weak nuclear force isn’t as weak as was previously thought. How did they figure this out? By determining to a more precise degree the lifespan of the muon, a subatomic particle similar to the electron.

[insert twenty minutes of me dinking around on Wikipedia reading about subatomic particles]

Apparently the muon lives for only 2 millionths of a second—or, more exactly, about 2.1969803 microseconds. This precise number was determined by scientists using a proton beam and graphite to create muons and by subsequently measuring the muons’ deaths with some sort of special detector thingy (technical, eh?). Over 2 trillion muons provided the data that led to the average lifespan of a little less than 2.2 microseconds.

So why do this? Because a more precise estimation of muon lifespan can be used to determine the intrinsic strength of the weak nuclear force. And why worry about the strength of the weak nuclear force? Because it is at least in part responsible for protons turning into neutrons inside the sun, which is pretty much a step before these particles are turned into heavier elements (like helium!) and…well, you know the rest.

The Fermi constant, a number used to capture the strength of the weak nuclear force, has been upgraded by about 0.00075 percent due to the muon experiment. Professor Michael Ramsey-Musolf, an expert on the weak nuclear force at the University of Wisconsin, says that “this implies that the sun does indeed burn more brightly and that the decay of nuclei is somewhat faster.”

And that’s pretty cool.

Or hot.

Ha. Puns.