Muons and Taus: Is There a Theoretical Reason They Decay So Rapidly?

[RJMooreII]

Are there any developed theories to explain why Muons and Taus decay so quickly, and why they don't stick around and leave us with x-ray emitting hydrogen atoms? It would be interesting if we could get them to last longer (I suppose relativistic speeds do, but that's still insignificant on the human scale), one could build all sorts of strangely behaving materials out of Tau-coupled nuclei.

 

[Vanadium 50]

This is covered in the Wikipedia entry on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon" .