How to See Inside Anything

[@Jobobn1998]

Muon Fun-fact: Muon's half life is insanely short--they only have an average lifespan of 2.2 micro-seconds--which means that they *should* decay before ever reaching the surface of the planet, let alone several kilometers beneath the surface. However, due to the time-dilating effects of Einsteinian relativity, and the fact that muons produced from cosmic rays are almost-always traveling at relativistic speeds, they are able to reach Earth's surface before decaying into more stable products. This is one of the (many) proofs we have that time dilation does occur. Edit: Grammar fix; this is what I get for quickly typing it out on my phone :P

[@kensalter]

Yep, did this experiment in physics undergrad myself!

[@FloridaMeng]

Oh my god that's so COOL

[@fuzzyhair321]

Huh that's really cool for something on the macro scale

[@douglaswilkinson5700]

It's described by his Special Theory of Relativity and called kinematic time dilation.

[@philipb2134]

Thank you for your insight,and for sharing. As muons decay, we might expect ' child-particulates',... What might these be?

[@clickrick]

Fun fact: At the Royal Greenwich Observatory's site in Cambridge, they used to have a cat they call Muon. Or possibly Mewon. They never quite made it clear.

[@jus7040]

Mufry or Mewthree 😁

[@Abdega]

His full name is Mewon Muon but his closest friends call him MuTwo

[@lordstevenson9619]

Nice to see this video, I will be starting a new job working with a crystallography group as a software engineer using muon, and neutron diffraction techniques in various experiments. It’s amazing what this technology can be applied to.

[@SuperSixel]

Good luck! It's an interesting field. I encourage you to try to go to one of the scattering facilities at least once, it's an experience for sure 😊

[@gsilcoful]

How are the dedectors made? If muons pass through everyting what material is used to detect them? Thank you.

[@roystonboodoo7525]

Wishing you all the best 👍

[@lordstevenson9619]

@@gsilcoful You can use something called a *plastic* *scintillator* *detector* , which produce photons when a charged particle, or any incident radiation, passes through the material. Measuring the decay time and wavelength of the emitted photon can be used to determine the type of particle, and other measurements. I’ve made a hand-wavy explanation here but that’s the gist of it.

[@prapanthebachelorette6803]

Good luck and have fun

[@MrHamster1010]

A favorite saying in our lab is, "With enough energy, anything is see-through"

[@bensoncheung2801]

42nd 👍 Too bright!!! 🌅🌅🌅 . . . Might the Sun be practically transparent, then?

[@Atheism-And-Normative-Ethics]

​@@bensoncheung2801 you'd have to project more energy at the sun in order to get through the energy it's emitting... I think

[@bensoncheung2801]

@@Atheism-And-Normative-Ethics Would you be able to *see* it, though?

[@kimberlyjacobsen4148]

@@Atheism-And-Normative-Ethicswhy? If the emitted particle is not absorbed by the sun, then I don’t see a problem. The problem could accrue if you can’t distinguish between the sun emitted and the vision emitted particles ☺️

[@philipb2134]

I'm an economist - in long run, we are all dead. / Heard from JK Albraith

[@Bowie_E]

Easy: just place your boat down in a one wide tunnel, drink a night vision potion, and slowly inch yourself through the wall a bit.

[@SouthParkSid1000]

Um what

[@theholypeanut8193]

@@SouthParkSid1000 A reference.

[@borttorbbq2556]

​@@SouthParkSid1000 It's a Minecraft joke Though that sounds like it probably would work depending on the version

[@TwinShards]

Nah you got it wrong just use a composter and push a block above it.

[@CoiledDracca]

You big geek... you did make me smile though. :)

[@Grateful.For.Everything]

This is really cool, def next level, we’ve figured out how to scan entire cargo ships and see it all by its chemical make up!!! Do y’all understand how wild that is, it’s amazing!

[@BenjaminIMeszaros]

The ability to see inside anything was inside you all along.

[@jaqihegland6232]

And through you, and out the other side of you...

[@TheMixmastamike1000]

I hope muon radiography makes its way into wall scanners for construction and the trades

[@nikkiofthevalley]

Just so you know, they didn't mention just how long this takes. There's only something like a single muon per minute in a 1x1x1 inch cube of area. But it has been used for stuff like that before, but on a much larger scale. Use the search term "muography" if you want to learn more than you can get in a 7 minute video.

[@Rebar77_real]

Once I heard muon I couldn't remember the word neutrino for some bong reason. So while looking up SNOLAB in Sudbury for the escaped word I noticed the SENSEI dark matter detector is now online. Wish them luck!!

[@JonnyMack33]

It's seriously incredible what good stuff us humans are capable of these days! .. that crazy uncle at the BBQ in the 90's talking about cosmic rays flying through space proving time travel wasn't so crazy was he 😂

[@misterthedork]

Perhaps this answers the question about how sensors and tricorders work in Star Trek 🤔

[@MACNTOSFAM]

as someone who’s worked in xray for many years, this would be a step up from the basic utilization & mission of using xrays. i wouldn’t mind going back to school to study & be licensed to use muons 😊

[@mattressbordi]

Rose is a great host

[@NipkowDisk]

I would LOVE to have a portable muon scanner for finding old survey monumentation buried by numerous paving projects, etc.!

[@kuunib7325]

This is interesting I've heard of refraction X-Ray and Neutron imaging, I've even once visited a Synchrotron microscope before, but Mouns. Well I guess if we can use Electrons in microscopes this isn't a far fetch.

[@azricon]

electron these nuts

[@JustMeJH]

I wonder if muon detectors could have human applications. They seem to be incredibly detailed.

[@UnashamedlyHentai]

indeed. this seems like a possible route toward human-safe tricorder tech.

[@rgibnz320]

Why if MRIs are pretty solid.

[@JustMeJH]

@@rgibnz320 Because you never know where or how progress might come from if you don’t ask the question. 😀

[@SameAsAnyOtherStranger]

What isn't discussed in the video is how long muonography takes. I read that on average a muon passes through a one inch square approximately every minute. Muon detector arrays can be set up and left in place and gather data over a long period of time. It would probably take days to render any useful imagery of a human body. Which I would imagine would have to remain quite still.

[@borttorbbq2556]

I don't know if humans Would be large enough. Basically worth checking out but seems unlikely.

[@KatieDeGo]

With enough mushrooms, anything is see-through

[@bobbyvee9950]

Mew-ons give you the powers of a cat.

[@SixFt12]

No, those are meow-ons.

[@1224chrisng]

you know which cat will slide down a slope the fastest? the one with the smallest mew

[@Octa9on]

@@1224chrisng physics nerd joke is physics nerdy

[@JamesDavy2009]

@@Octa9on And yet it was such a joke Douglas Adams wrote that spawned the Infinite Improbability Drive.

[@User5738-j4k]

@@SixFt12loved it 😂

[@rickhobson3211]

Do they use mew-ons to do cat scans? :D

[@ayas9093]

Please, more videos about elementary particles :)

[@NeuralNightmares]

This video was the first thing I saw after reading a research paper on how a team of Ohio researchers managed to use x-rays to 'see' a single atom

[@Moonbagger1]

I'm taking notes for my sci-fi writing.

[@1224chrisng]

10000 particles per minute per square meter isn't a lot. If you have an imaging sensor that takes 100 particles per pixel, making a 100x100 pixel resolution image, that sensor will need to expose for 100 minutes for a 1m sensor, 10000 mins for a 10cm sensor, and 1000000 mins for 1cm. That's around 2 years. something's gotta budge, either you have a giant sensor or you have a tiny resolution. This is impractical for anything but some very niche fields

[@rafetizer]

The 10k number was just the average received naturally here on Earth. Not sure that limit applies to a man-made emitter/detector setup.

[@ryanderoche3330]

Are we ever going to see SCIshow Quiz Show again? I miss it!

[@bobbyfartz5591]

Get better soon, Hank green!

[@Dirk_Berserk]

could we just have a "relief valve" for volcanoes? like let the pressure never build up by bleeding out excess magma

[@Octa9on]

probably? but it'd be really difficult, what with the magma melting your drill and wanting to explode out through the hole you're making. volcanos are actually one of the easiest to predict of all natural disasters. we almost always detect an impending eruption weeks or months in advance

[@Dirk_Berserk]

@@Octa9on probably hard to find volunteers lol

[@AlexandarHullRichter]

@@Octa9on that's what mining explosives are for. You drill where you want your vent to be until you're close to the magma, and then break through that last wall with explosives set off remotely so you're not near them.

[@NexuJin]

@5:39 I want a looped animation of this for as my wallpaper.

[@roystonboodoo7525]

Enlightening

[@obidobi2]

I like that the thumbnail is an x-ray image with the text it's not with x-rays

[@oopsy444]

So since we're hit by them all the time is it a lot safer for both people being "xrayed" with muons and for the technicians using the machine

[@nigeljohnson9820]

So how does a muon detector work? Would have been nice if this had been included.

[@SameAsAnyOtherStranger]

It's surprisingly simple and cheap.

[@merrickhurst4150]

They literally described it in the middle of the video.

[@32rq]

Is the thumbnail misleading (currently it shows the bones in a hand)? The video doesn't seem to talk about this application at all.

[@Cynthia63636]

The thumbnail shows x-ray image doing a thumbs down.. "how to look through anything" "not x-ray" how is that misleading? Other then not answering the question in the thumbnail.

[@__-pl3jg]

Wish we could see examples of the muon radiography equipment. All they showed is XRAYs and MRI machines 🙄

[@Gildedmuse]

I don't think the few muon reading machines we have look at all like machines that can see inside bodies.

[@hadensnodgrass3472]

As nuclear engineer, I will explain what I know. Muons can essentially be thought of as extremely heavy electrons for any normal matter interactions. They can not be used as an X-Ray alternative, due to the severe lack of resolution. As the video described, the technology has its uses on large scale applications such as detecting volcanic activity or "X-Ray" a weather phenomenon. I don't have any experience with the biologically effects of muon radiation, but I expect that for an equivalent RAD, the muon will produce an equal, if not higher REM.

[@Octa9on]

​@@hadensnodgrass3472 (I'm not a physicist, but I play one on the internet) I believe you're correct. the advantage of muons is that they occur naturally with high energy, so you only need the right detectors and analysis to look deep inside big things. as you mentioned though, natural muons aren't useful for medical imaging; there's just not enough of them vs how weakly they interact with ordinary matter. and yes, if you sent enough through someone to get a good medical image, there'd be the same kind of health risks as with x-ray imaging

[@D0li0]

The tomography sounds interesting, in that it's measuring entry and exit deflection. Makes me wonder if that could scale up to the size of earth and image the whole plant? Crazy, right. Or maybe just a global "face down" detection array... But if your deploying that, might as well face a sensor up and do the tomography.

[@SameAsAnyOtherStranger]

Too bad you don't have internet access and could look up articles on websites.

[@grahamrankin4725]

Want to know how they are detecting the muons

[@tellmey1]

this sounds great!

[@pacosninjatacoteam2884]

They should use that on Mt St Helens as well while they're doing volcanoes. I am a bit biased tho, I live in WA

[@greensteve9307]

You live in Western Australia?

[@ancientswordrage]

I did a physics project on this!

[@stax6092]

If we start using them on cows can we call them "Moo-Ons"?

[@michaelszczys8316]

My son got me a flashlight with new super- duper crazy bright LED and you can actually see through your hands with it. We call it the ' x-ray machine '.

[@General12th]

Hi Rose!

[@zioqqr4262]

This video is the first instance where Ive actually heard someone say "nucular" in a context other than talking about how some people say "nucular" instead of "nuclear"

[@crazysquirrel9425]

Muon detectors coming to a police drone near you....

[@grndragon2443]

Photoacustic imaging can see bones and anything else you program it to see.

[@KHAT0VAR]

Muon Radiology is all well and good but have you tried "Mutwo-on Radiography"?

[@mrnobody.4069]

Cool, can we use it on spaceship as sensors.

[@beepboop204]

[@petethebeat48]

Finally. We’ve invented the scanner on the starship Enterprise....

[@JhasNo-q4v]

Positive Film

[@JigJagging]

0:22 "nucular waste" ? I'd accept that from any non-science channel, but not from Sci-Show, it's nuclear, not nucular

[@rafetizer]

How you gonna get your muon detector on the under-side of the magma?

[@stephenipsen3776]

Have they tried it on the Yellowstone super volcano?

[@SameAsAnyOtherStranger]

Muon detectors have to be placed on both sides of the object and muons only penetrate 2.5 kilometers into the earth. Since the Yellowstone magma pool is completely underground, this isn't possible.

[@ampere-mam]

My question would what if nothing but muno where to decay on any given surface what element with that created???

[@ddpwe5269]

ahh, and a new superhero is born! =P

[@kx4532]

Is there enough to view bones?

[@hybridvigor2007]

Very cool!

[@Nethershaw]

Sure sounds like a superpower to me.

[@TerryBollinger]

I'm a fan of SciShow, but I removed my earlier upvote on this one for a specific reason: the thumbnail is a visual deception, implying that muons _already_ produce images at resolutions identical to X-rays. Pyramids are not hands. Due to the deceptive thumbnail, it took me some time to realize I was already familiar with the technology and knew its limits (receiver luminosity) that were never discussed. I felt tricked. Thumbnail deception as a cheap way to grab attention is common on KZbin, but very rare for SciShow. Please don't get into a habit of it, as it undermines your credibility.

[@kevinailes4418]

Why is the video clip of the hurricane going backwards?

[@homemovelha4173]

MUON GOES BRRRRRRRRR

[@cookiesaregreat]

-It's NUCLEAR NU+CLEE+AR. Not Nuc+U+Lar.- Edit: Nevermind, I noticed she got it right later in the episode so it was likely just a slip of the tonue.

[@corwinweber693]

It's also a southern thing. Accent quirk. Yes, we made fun of George W. Bush for saying it that way..... but Jimmy Carter pronounced it the same way and he worked on nuclear reactors in the Navy. It's basically the southern American version of saying alumINium.

[@myREALnameISiAM]

Sound?

[@Law0086]

2:14 Oh if we got this dog in our pet hospital we'd probably be able to go hands-free. OSHA wants sedation nowadays. Talk about driving up the vet hospital bill.

[@lalo0923]

Has anyone payed attention to her hands? 😳 how does she manage to do that???!!!! I tried while watching this video and failed every time

[@hlcdriver]

Erm, your cyclone/hurricane @ 5:39 is rotating the wrong way.

[@Starfals]

I was just wondering if Xray can see behind the bones, and then this video shows up lol.

[@arnabsaha5185]

Make a video on quantum generator patent...

[@julietfreeman3392]

I think airports are going to slowly but surely phase out x-ray imaging altogether so that you can keep liquids in your carryon baggage

[@eSKAone-]

Star Trek stuff 💟

[@CallmeRood]

I, for one, also do not want a horrible thing to happen to a lot of people.

[@gregorygaskill5412]

Particles of energy surround and interact with anything possessing mass, figuring out how to harness, store and concentrate this energy would render "fossil fuels" obsolete, (mostly). I believe some particles are transferring information to the universe, the framework of physics, so to speak. The places where physics change is where we need to study, if these muons and other particles are blocked or interrupted then physics as we recognize it, breaks down. Just a thought, but dark energy and matter just may be the result of particles not able to behave "normally". Who knows? Perhaps we can harness this strange, elusive energy. Dark E might be the "hard drive" of the universe, all other particles behave as they do because of this galactic quantum operating system.

[@bhami]

You didn't discuss the cost, or show us the detectors. It must be incredibly expensive since this is the first I've ever heard of it in my nearly 70 years.

[@Octa9on]

it's actually not very expensive. the main issue is the long time it takes to detect enough muons to form a useful image, which can be days or weeks in some cases. I don't know how early experiments were done, but at present off-the-shelf scintillator materials and common software enable inexpensive imaging of ancient stone structures, for example

[@ariagauthier9374]

Imagine thinking you have all the knowledge in the world at a meager 70, bold stance to take

[@HFC786]

Fascinating

[@gene1491]

Existed since the 1960s but only hear aboit it now?? I wanna use it as a reverse sonar.

[@gunargundarson1626]

I managed to see the silhouette of my skeleton hand with a really bright flashlight when I was 11.

[@davetoms1]

Plus "muon" is just fun to say 🤓

[@redblade8160]

Don't worry, she says, "muons" pass straight through you"! The point is, what destruction have they left behind after passing straight through the body?

[@fotnite_]

They're passing through you as we speak. When we're doing the stuff described in the video, we're not even making any muons, we're just measuring the ones that are already coming through from the atmosphere.

[@bettyswallocks6411]

So, if muons will pass right through me, was the burrito I ate earlier made from muons?

[@ToriHalfon]

A cat-scientist named Mew-ons.

[@FloridaMeng]

How do i put these in sunglasses?

[@WahrheitMachtFrei.]

1:00 *heliopause

[@daniellen3263]

I didn't understand why we are not using them instead of X-ray to scan bones ?

[@rafetizer]

You need something like a particle accelerator to create muons, meaning it's currently not really feasible to do in a healthcare setting.

[@3possumsinatrenchcoat]

because we aren't producing/directing the muons towards whatever is being scanned, just passively recording them, it would take days (if not weeks) sitting in front of the machine to get an image, and likely a low-res one at that. the scans of buildings/moments she mentioned took months to make.

[@SameAsAnyOtherStranger]

SciShow in it's never ending quest to hype all things science didn't mention a couple of time pertinent facts. One, muon topography was first used commercially in the 1950s and the other is how long it takes to acquire an image. It took months to acquire enough data from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

[@brendakrieger7000]

Cool

[@thedoctoradvocate8251]

Well duh its not X rays, its Z rays. You cant see through zebras with Y rays

[@oddoutdoors]

Its with knives!

[@garcipat]

Why says that supermans vision is x-ray?

[@chameleon8844]

Do these things add to the mass of Earth? Just a nuckle head asking nuckle head questions 😅

[@Octa9on]

yes, but in an unimaginably tiny way. the bits of dust that fall into the atmosphere as shooting stars add way more mass to the earth

[@huldu]

What if in a few hundred years it's discovered that muons are the cause of all problems?

[@toms5996]

You're talking probabilities that are most likely never viable. At the moment we do magnetic reconanse imaging machines small enough to scan one limb - I would report on that as that is a huge leap in technology, in use today. To make MRI machines that small is a huge feat.

[@maythesciencebewithyou]

By opening it

[@ChristopherJackson1]

At 05:19 that's a terrible lateral xray of the knee.

[@xpndblhero5170]

Why can't we put muon detectors on each side of the planet so we can map the tectonic movement therefore studying earthquakes and stuff¿?

[@IchiroSakamoto]

1:39

[@lauram9478]

❤

[@ecenarro]

A time will come where a wearable device will pick up those moun bounces from your body for health diagnostics

[@thepeff]

"Magma"

[@bensoncheung2801]

👍👍👍👍

[@h7opolo]

0:22 hah "nucular." George W Bush would be so proud.

[@suruxstrawde8322]

(Past surux) Imma guess it’s sound.

[@suruxstrawde8322]

Damm, a mf was incredibly wrong. Tho not a bad option to use ultrasound. (Mid-time-surux) now how tf do they sense particles that go through stuff?

[@suruxstrawde8322]

Absolutely fascinating, they use the fact it still experiences contact entropy even with how little it touches- and simply make thiccer sensors. (Now present surux)

[@bmiller949]

I think I need a muon detector to find my car keys in the morning.

[@Ralyx0]

With a sharp enough knife.

[@CNCmachiningisfun]

With a sharp enough knife, we can split the atom - and make a rather nasty mess ;) .