🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jul21.172715.3167@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes...
>In article <92203.121247CCB104@psuvm.psu.edu> <CCB104@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>>For want of a sponsor or potential "licensee," an official "Invention
>>Disclosure" outlining an unconventional method of forcibly changing
> 
>    What would be the 'conventional method'?  Acceleration to high
>    energy?

As you know, that would not change the decay rate in the nucleus' rest
frame.  There is however a way to modify some decay rates, though most
people don't realize it because they are incorrectly taught that nothing
environmental can affect the decay rate of a radioactive nucleus.

For nuclei which decay by K capture, the decay rate is sensitive to the
electronic structure of the atom.  This is obvious, because any capture
matrix element will have to include the electron's wave function.  So if
you take such an atom and bind it in a molecule so that it's electronic
orbitals are perturbed, you affect the decay rate of the nucleus.

You can look up the details in Segre's book _Nuclei and Particles_.  The
effect has been experimentally verified.  Although I don't know if it has
ever been done, you can easily imagine that very high pressures will also
change the decay rate of a solid lump of such an element, for the same 
reasons.

I can also imagine that putting a nucleus which is gamma unstable between
two plates, ala Casimir, would affect the decay rate by changing the 
allowed photon spectrum in the gap.  But because of the very high frequency
the plates would have to be much closer than is typical for the kind
of cavity experiments you read about nowadays.


-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"The question seems to be of such a character
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		that if I should come to life after my death
				and some mathematician were to tell me that it
				had been definitely settled, I think I would
				immediately drop dead again."      - Vandiver