Muons, formed by cosmic rays, are much better than X-rays at revealing the secrets behind structures on Earth — and show invisible cracks and chambers filled with liquids.
What if muons, energetic particles formed by cosmic rays, helped assess damage after the end of the war in Ukraine?
This is the proposal presented by GScanan Estonian company that works on detectors that use these particles, capable of revealing hidden cracks and fractures in structures such as buildings and bridges.
Muons are generated when highly energetic protons, atomic nuclei from cosmic rays and molecules from Earth’s atmosphere collide. Yours “life” is short and intense: exist for just 2 microseconds, before decaying into electrons and antineutrinos.
However, before their “death”, these particles move at the speed of light — it only takes 1 second for around 10,000 muons to reach the Earth’s surface, penetrating hundreds of meters deep.
In the 1970s, researchers experimented with muon detectors to search for hidden chambers in a pyramid in Egypt, but it took another 50 years to refine the technology. GScan is one of the companies that has made some advances, with detectors that have already been used in different projects.
“There is currently no other technology capable of showing what is inside a concrete block”, he states. Andi Hectorco-founder of the company, cited by .
According to Hektor, the most powerful X-ray system reveals what exists up to 20 centimeters deep; Muon detectors can reveal what is hidden tens of meters away. Furthermore, these particles provide details about what exists in the structures, such as invisible fissures and chambers filled with liquids.
To do this, a sensor made from a special plastic fiber detects the passage of thousands or even millions of muons as they approach the object. Combining several layers of fiber bladesresearchers are able to reconstruct the trajectory of the muons as they pass through the material in different locations.
Then, another detector, positioned on the opposite side of the concrete structure, measures the change in the trajectory of the muons, which occurs due to the dispersion caused by irregularities in the material.
“Based on this information, we can build an understanding of how the trajectory changes, on average, as it passes through the object. With this, we can draw conclusions about the material and the condition of the structure”, explained the person in charge.
Consider, for example, a damaged bridge. In this case, detectors could spend a week collecting data from a single part of the structure. GScan is currently discussing with the Ukrainian authorities the possibility of testing the technology in Paton Bridgea 1,543-meter structure built in Kiev, Ukraine, 70 years ago.
“They obviously have different concerns at this point,” Hektor noted, but this “is something we can do when conditions are more suitable, when they start to rebuild everything,” he concluded.
The most recent estimates from the World Bank point to a necessary cost of 5 billion dollars to rebuild the country — a number that, since it was presented, has already skyrocketed.
