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Sure. There are plenty of things with enough energy to produce them in collisions, like higher-energy cosmic rays and quasar beams. The have a mass of 1.8 GeV/c^2 . According to the Wikipedia entry on cosmic rays, we get about one cosmic ray that energetic per square meter per second at Earth. So there is enough energy to produce them reasonably often.
But as the other comment says, they will not last long. I would not expect them to have a noticeable effect on the universe, owing to the short lifetime and small quantities..
We would not expect to find them except in natural particle collisions. Even in neutron star collapses, the energies rarely get much above 100 MeV per particle. A star would become a black hole before it developed enough crushing force to produce tau particles in bulk.
I don't know that they are, but I wouldn't be surprised.
They have an incredibly short "lifespan" (~0.0000000000003 seconds) and they decay into electrons so it would be hard to prove that they do occur in nature.
edit: a quick check on the internet and they decay into many different kinds of particles, not just electrons.
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[–] tin_has_ten_isotopes 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Sure. There are plenty of things with enough energy to produce them in collisions, like higher-energy cosmic rays and quasar beams. The have a mass of 1.8 GeV/c^2 . According to the Wikipedia entry on cosmic rays, we get about one cosmic ray that energetic per square meter per second at Earth. So there is enough energy to produce them reasonably often.
But as the other comment says, they will not last long. I would not expect them to have a noticeable effect on the universe, owing to the short lifetime and small quantities..
We would not expect to find them except in natural particle collisions. Even in neutron star collapses, the energies rarely get much above 100 MeV per particle. A star would become a black hole before it developed enough crushing force to produce tau particles in bulk.
[–] oedipusaurus_rex ago (edited ago)
I don't know that they are, but I wouldn't be surprised.
They have an incredibly short "lifespan" (~0.0000000000003 seconds) and they decay into electrons so it would be hard to prove that they do occur in nature.
edit: a quick check on the internet and they decay into many different kinds of particles, not just electrons.