Muonium

Okay, so imagine you have a toy car that you can take apart and put back together. Now let's say you take two different pieces from that toy car and glue them together - that's sort of like what muonium is!

Muonium is a special particle made up of two different types of tiny particles called subatomic particles. One is called an electron (which is what goes around the outside of an atom), and the other is called a muon (which is sort of like an electron, but much heavier).

Scientists make muonium by taking a muon and getting it to stick to an atom or molecule that's missing an electron. When the muon and atom or molecule bond together, they create a brand new particle, which is the muonium.

Even though muonium isn't something that exists naturally in the world around us, scientists find it useful for studying the behavior of subatomic particles. They can look at muonium under a microscope (well, actually a really fancy microscope called a particle accelerator), and learn more about how atoms and molecules behave on a super tiny level.