On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 3:25 PM, <mix...@bigpond.com> wrote: In order to be at least the same, and considering that the energy input per > fission event would need to be about 10 MeV, you would need at least 1 GeV > muons.
In the context of muon-induced fission in thorium (something I skimmed past here recently but have not yet read up on), this might not be a requirement. In muonic lead, the mean charge radius of the 1s muonic orbital lies *within* the nucleus. So that's almost an additional -1e of charge that is screening the Coulomb barrier. We've discussed the possibility of induced fission through screening of the Coulomb barrier here before, and there were good arguments for and against additional electron density increasing the fission rate. But consider for a moment that if muonic thorium has a higher decay rate, this is potential evidence for negative charge increasing the rate. Does anyone have a link to the discussion of muon-induced fission in thorium? This abstract suggests that there's some kind of reverse internal conversion, but I wonder whether that's the full story. http://journals.aps.org/prc/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevC.48.1297 Eric
