Muons, mutations, and planetary shielding

Abstract

Life on earth is protected from astrophysical cosmic rays by the heliospheric magnetic and slowly varying geomagnetic fields, and by collisions with oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere. The collisions generate showers of particles of lesser energy; only muons, a charged particle with a mass between that of an electron and a proton, can reach earth's surface in substantial quantities. Muons are easily detected, used to image interior spaces of pyramids, and known to limit the stability of qubits in quantum computing; yet, despite their charge, average energy of 4 GeV and ionizing properties, muons are not considered to affect chemical reactions or biology. In this Perspective the potential damaging effects of muons on DNA, and hence the repercussions for evolution and disease, are examined. It is argued here that the effect of muons on life through DNA mutations should be considered when investigating the protection provided by the magnetic environment and atmosphere from cosmic rays on earth and exoplanets.

Keywords: DNA; aging; diseases; evolution; exoplanets; magnetospheres; muons; mutations.

FIGURE 1

Examples representing 70 studies, the associated Pearson correlation coefficients, a comparison of polyp, lung nodule and estimated muon event distributions and the omnipresent neoplasia equations. (Heuvelmans et al., 2017; Xirasagar et al., 2020; de Groen, 2022c). Top: Examples of distribution of one or more disease events per person. From left to right are shown spontaneous pregnancy loss, cancer, aging, disease incidence and mortality, and autoimmune disease. “Observed” depicts documented data; “ONE” depicts modeled data using omnipresent neoplasia equation 2) derived from colon polyp studies and shown in the bottom panel. Middle: A summary of the type of disease, the number of studies and the median Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) shown in Top panel. Bottom: Left: Observed colon polyp and lung nodule data in at-risk persons around age 60 and mutations per cell in 0.5 days given 1 muon event/cell/day. Right: omnipresent neoplasia equations (de Groen, 2020a).

FIGURE 2

The effect of MIP radiation on survival of fruit flies with tefu^−/−, the fruit fly gene similar to the human ATM gene. At surface level, offspring from heterozygous tefu^+/− flies consists for about 2% of flies homozygous for tefu^−/−. This effect happens independently of background strain, as shown for wildtype A and B. The mutation does not alter the number of eggs produced or the number of eggs hatched (77% each at surface and underground level), but only deep underground in the absence of nearly all MIP radiation do tefu^−/− eggs develop into the expected number of fruit flies. Arrows mark sequential experimental results. Adapted from Morciano et al. (2018).