Physicists commonly use a Minkowski Diagram to look for patterns in relativistic data. They plot the lifetime vs. the decay length for each particle. The lifetime is defined as the separation in time as measured by the detector between the creation of a particle and its decay. The decay length is the separation in space between the creation of a particle and its decay.

Each particle has four values which define its existence:

The Minkowski Diagram is a plot of the differences in these ordered pairs. The points on the plot are:

Hermann Minkowski (1864-1909) was a physicist who worked on resolving paradoxes in electrodynamics. He was also one of Albert Einstein's instructors in Zurich.