that could stick around unreasonably long, maybe, for minutes or hours… is that even possible?
Possible, yes, probable, no.
Suppose we have a particle with a half-life of one second. To have decent odds of one sticking around for n seconds, you’d need to observe around 2^n particles. For 10 seconds, that’s 1024 particles. For 20 seconds, that’s around million particles, 30 seconds, ~1 billion particles. To see a particle last for one minute, you’d have to observe ~1,000,000,000,000,000,000 particles.
Particles observed at the LHC typically have half-lives of much less than one second.
Possible, yes, probable, no.
Suppose we have a particle with a half-life of one second. To have decent odds of one sticking around for n seconds, you’d need to observe around 2^n particles. For 10 seconds, that’s 1024 particles. For 20 seconds, that’s around million particles, 30 seconds, ~1 billion particles. To see a particle last for one minute, you’d have to observe ~1,000,000,000,000,000,000 particles.
Particles observed at the LHC typically have half-lives of much less than one second.