Muon decays in the Earth's atmosphere, time dilatation and relativity of simultaneity

Abstract

Observation of the decay of muons produced in the Earth's atmosphere by cosmic ray interactions provides a graphic illustration of the counter-intuitive space-time predictions of special relativity theory. Muons at rest in the atmosphere decaying simultaneously are subject to a universal time-dilatation effect when viewed from a moving frame and so are also observed to decay simultaneously in all such frames, whereas the decays of muons with different proper frames show relativity of simultaneity when observed from different inertial frames.

12 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. v2 Reference and some typos corrected. v3 calculational and conceptual errors invalidating conclusions explained in Added Note (see also arXiv:0809.1314) References updated

References in corpus (4)

• Clock rates, clock settings and the physics of the space-time Lorentz transformation
• Space-time transformation properties of inter-charge forces and dipole radiation: Breakdown of the classical field concept in relativistic electrodynamics
• Absolute simultaneity and invariant lengths: Special Relativity without light signals or synchronised clocks
• Uniformly moving clocks in special relativity: Time dilatation, but no relativity of simultaneity or length contraction