The muon was discovered in 1936 by physicists at Caltech studying cosmic rays, one of whom also co-discovered the positron. This finding mattered because it revealed that matter comes in three generations, with the muon and tau joining the electron as heavier, unexplained counterparts. The hosts note that why there are exactly three generations of matter remains an unsolved problem in physics, and that quarks show the same three-generation pattern.
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The transcript names Carl Anderson, who also discovered the positron, as one of the two Caltech physicists credited with the muon discovery; a second name is given but too garbled in the transcript to confirm.
150 words · auto-generated from the episode video
54:37>> We've talked about this before. 1936, the discovery of the muon. Nice mug shot there. >> Yeah, there's Seth Natermeer with his mug shot at Los Alamos for the Manhattan Project. Um, he was at Caltech along with Carl Anderson, who's the guy who did the positron. um they discovered the muon by analyzing cosmic rays. This is crucial because this is the first time that we understand that there are three generations of matter. I keep talking about this like nobody knows still to this day why the muon exists. But the electron makes sense. Okay, mathematically it makes there's got to be something that's negative charge. But then you've got the muon and the towel. There's three generations and nobody
55:18knows why there are three generations. And this is still an unsolved problem in physics. There are also three generations in quirks which we'll get to later.