Physicists' hopes for an exotic muon

By Adrian Cho

June 12, 2025 5:10 PM ET

To regain the lead in particle physics, the United States should build an entirely new type of "atom smasher" by the middle of the century, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) say in a report released yesterday. In recent years, physicists have dreamed of building a collider that would smash muons, which are heavier, unstable cousins of electrons. Although the technical hurdles are high, a muon collider could in principle reach unprecedented energies and search for new particles and phenomena at a much lower cost than more conventional accelerators.

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