Since muons produce when cosmic rays crash and collide into air molecules in the atmosphere, one would think that there would not be any muons in space. Is it true?
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Related: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/418161/astronomical-sources-of-muons – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Feb 24 '19 at 23:00
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They can exist in space, but only briefly. Muons are unstable, with a short lifetime of only 2.2 microseconds in their rest frame. They decay usually into an electron and two different kinds of neutrinos. Interplanetary and intergalactic space is not completely empty, and muons could be produced in space by occasional high-energy particle collisions, but the muons don’t last long there, or here.
G. Smith
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