1936 Muon

Muon

• A muon is a heavy electron,
• over 200 times heavier.
• Since electrons are so useful,
• you’d expect the muon
• to be even more useful;
• however, muons decay rapidly,
• like in about a couple microseconds.

Other work

• Anderson discovered the positron,
• confirming Paul Dirac’s prediction
• of the existence of antimatter.
• Neddermeyer helped discover the positron
• and advocated detonating a nuclear bomb
• by implosion with conventional explosives,
• which was the means of detonation
• of the bomb we dropped on Nagasaki
• and of most modern nuclear weapons.
• Both Anderson and Neddermeyer studied particles
• contained in cosmic rays and particles generated
• by cosmic rays hitting Earth’s atmosphere.

Muon fusion

• Muons may replace
• electron in hydrogen atoms
• where they can catalyze fusion.
• But the energy released by the fusion
• is far less than is required
• to produce the muons.

Muon power

• To produce a whole lot of muons,
• you could smash hadrons into hadrons
• using a particle accelerator,
• which is expensive and impractical.
• But high-energy cosmic rays
• hitting the atmosphere create
• over a thousand muons per square foot per minute
• hitting Earth at nearly the speed of light,
• so why not use magnetic fields
• to focus muons that rain down upon us anyway,
• and use them to generate power?
• We could be rich!