I was reading about muon-catalyzed cold fusion, and I thought if muons don't work in cold fusion maybe some other negative subatomic particles would.

Muons decay after 2.2 x 10 ^-6  s, which is too short for cold fusion.

Kaons (K^-): Charge-parity violation, which generates the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe, was discovered in the kaon system in 1964.

The lifetime of the kaon is 1.238 x 10 ^-8  s, too short for cold fusion.

Tau lepton: Has a lifetime of 2.9 x 10 ^-13 s, too short to be considered for cold fusion.

We have discovered 64 events of the form e⁺ + e^-  > e^+- + muon^-+ + at least 2 undetected particles for which we have no conventional explanation.

In total, the tau lepton will decay hadronically approximately  64.79% of the time.

These particles decay in too short a time. There may be some other negatively charged subatomic particles that will decay in a longer time and can substitute for the electron to cause cold fusion.

 

1 hour ago, IsaacAsimov said:

Muons decay after 2.2 x 10 ^-6  s, which is too short for cold fusion.

But as far as I know it does work with muons. The other question is that it's not very economical, but this is due to other reasons in addition to muons decaying such as needing to produced muons to be used in reaction and also muons sticking to resultant nucleus. 

And i thought Isaac Asimov was dead...  

17 hours ago, pavelcherepan said:

But as far as I know it does work with muons. The other question is that it's not very economical, but this is due to other reasons in addition to muons decaying such as needing to produced muons to be used in reaction and also muons sticking to resultant nucleus. 

How about using a negative ion in place of the electron? Would that work?

19 hours ago, IsaacAsimov said:

We have discovered 64 events of the form e⁺ + e^-  > e^+- + muon^-+ + at least 2 undetected particles for which we have no conventional explanation.

Who is "we"? And where is this reported?

By "we", I mean the scientific community. I got all of my facts from Wikipedia.org.

24 minutes ago, IsaacAsimov said:

By "we", I mean the scientific community. I got all of my facts from Wikipedia.org.

Can you provide a slightly more specific reference. There are thousands of pages on Wikipedia.

57 minutes ago, IsaacAsimov said:

How about using a negative ion in place of the electron? Would that work?

I was under the impression that the muon's role was to make the hydrogen atom very small, so the protons get close to each other without having to deal (or deal as much) with the Coulomb barrier. Using a negative ion doesn't fill that role. That just means you have a molecule.

 

21 hours ago, pavelcherepan said:

But as far as I know it does work with muons. The other question is that it's not very economical, but this is due to other reasons in addition to muons decaying such as needing to produced muons to be used in reaction and also muons sticking to resultant nucleus. 

Thank you for your help. Did you know that you look almost like Stan Laurel of the Laurel and Hardy famous comedy duo?

 

2 hours ago, Strange said:

Can you provide a slightly more specific reference. There are thousands of pages on Wikipedia.

Just look up specific subatomic particles, for instance muon, kaon, tau lepton.

 

Edited November 15, 20187 yr by IsaacAsimov
slight modification

12 minutes ago, IsaacAsimov said:

Just look up specific subatomic particles, for instance muon, kaon, tau lepton.

No. That's not how this works. 

Please provide a reference to support your claim that:

Quote

We have discovered 64 events of the form e+ + e-  > e+- + muon-+ + at least 2 undetected particles for which we have no conventional explanation.

 

Goto Wikipedia.org, then search for "tau lepton". Look under History, and there it is. I hope this satisfies you.

22 minutes ago, IsaacAsimov said:

I hope this satisfies you.

Not at all. Post a link.

4 hours ago, IsaacAsimov said:

Thank you for your help. Did you know that you look almost like Stan Laurel of the Laurel and Hardy famous comedy duo?

Well, that's not me, this is Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear/Grand Tour.