Erik Engdahl:
General report from E about muons on 10 Dec. 1994, the Nobel day.

Sometimes, there is a kind of elementary particle named positive muon(µ+). If one has such a one, one will not have it for that much further amount of time. The reason is that it entirely by itself will break into pieces after on the average about two millions of a second. It is instable(radioactive). If one wants to use a muon for something, one must thus hurry up. One way is to send it into a magnetic material. With special equipments it is then possible to register one of the dying muon's S.O.S. signals, a so called positron(the anti-particle of the electron). The muon is, as many other elementary particles, among other things a microscopic magnetic compass needle. Nowadays, one can produce many muons that rush along a beam where every individual muon is oriented with its south pole in the direction of travel. W hen the muon has settled down somewhere in the magnetic material, it is going to feel the fluctuations from all the other billions and further billions of compass needles. They fluctuate due to temperature movements. (Even at the absolute zero-point, some quantum mechanical fluctuations would remain.) The result is that the muon successively will forget about how it was oriented when it entered the magnetic material. The previously mentioned S.O.S. signal contains in statistical meaning information about how the compass needle was oriented at the moment of its death. By statistical analysis of the S.O.S. signals it is possible to determine the rate of forgetness. This experimental technique is called muon spin relaxation(µSR) . The rate of forgetness depends on the composition and structure of the magnetic material, on temperature, on applied pressure and applied magnetic field and on where in the magnetic material the muons settle down. The rate of forgettness is of physical interest in the sense that many physicists think is interesting.

I am currently engaged in theoretical investigations of what happens when muons are sent into magnetic materials in the way just described. In this way, I interpret (or predict), what is really measured in the µSR experiments. This I do at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory which is situation in the center of nowhere south of Oxford. I have been doing that about a year. In April, I will increase my research in Social Sciences and Psychology. I will employ my dedogmatisation method on theories in these fields.


Comments and suggestions to Erik Engdahl
with e-mail address engdahl.erikREMOVE.THESE.FOUR.WORDS@gmail.com
and entry to his web pages http://www.erikengdahl.se/.
Last modified on 26 Apr. 2007.