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Dr. Schund, how do we fit ten kilos of sand into a one gram bag?
The laws of atomic physics are immutable. Atoms are defined by their electron shells, by quantum mechanics and Fermi statistics. Were it not for these footnotes, the Earth would gravitationally collapse into a small solid sphere of nuclear matter, well beyond white hot (adiabatic compression) and incapable of paying taxes.
(Earth's diameter is 7930 miles. Pull the Fermi statistics' plug buoying its electrons and the average atom shrinks from a nominal diameter of 0.472 nanometers to nuclear dimensions of about 3 femtometers. 7930 miles becomes 266 feet.)
There are other ways to pull the plug.
A muon is an electron's fat brother, a point lepton with negative charge and 206.76 times the electron's mass. Substituting a muon for an electron in a hydrogen atom gives a ground state orbit radial probability density with 1/207 the radius and 1/8,870,000 the volume. Solid molecular hydrogen at 13 kelvin has a density of 0.0763 gm/cm3. Mu-hydrogen would have a density of about 677,000 gm/cm3 - more than 2/3 of a metric tonne! Do not put the bottle upon a soft surface.
Add a freshly popped hot muon to matter and it slows down inside the target by electromagnetic interaction scattering to 2 keV in 10-11 to 10-9 seconds. Muons capture into a high orbital angular momentum states of atoms, principle quantum number n=14, forming excited muonic atoms. Given a 207 factor in mass, muon vs. electron, the muon orbits between electron orbits and the nucleus despite its enormous principle quantum number, in 10-15 to 10-14 seconds. The muon cascades down to its 1s ground state. Initial de-excitation emits Auger electrons, outer atomic electrons evaporating energy released by muon transitions, leaving a multiply charged ion. As the muon cascades down, the energy of each transition increases until the Auger effect is small compared to X-ray transitions.
Dr. Schund is all tingly with possibilities! With its lowest energy excitation nestled deep into the x-ray region (first line in the µ-H Lyman series is 6.5 Angstroms for a binding energy of 2530 eV; page 106, Quantum Physics of Atoms, Molecules, Solids, Nuclei, and Particles, 2nd edition, R. Eisberg and R.Resnick), µ,µ-H2 will be the most transparent substance on earth as well as the densest. Invisible invincible armor, anybody? Oh, Pentagon... Even its name is rich with possibilities. Who could resist funding "mew,mew-aitch-two?"
Can the H*Y*D*R*O*G*E*N "mew,mew-aitch-two" economy be anything but imminently up our asses and out our wallets?
There do exist certain issues and improvement opportunities, which is to say worse than potentially fatal problems. For light nuclei the rate of muon nuclear capture is small, to give a two microsecond half-life overall. The muon can decay in orbit to an electron and two neutrinos, or enter the nucleus to allow proton capture and give a neutron and a neutrino.
Government stockpiling is intrinsic to any advanced business plan. Two millionths of a second makes for a very deficient corporate prospectus were it not for the Top Secret/Lotus Eater Schund Neutrino Squeegee! Is there a short intrinsic half-life attended by neutrino emission chewing on your butt Mr. Businessman? No problem. How many decades' half-life do you need? How many can you afford? Dr. Schund has all sorts of outrageous and undesirable uses planned for really heavy hydrogen - molecular, solid, and metallic.
In the late 1990s Washington was beset by a grievous shortage of catastrophes (Monica Lewsinky's hot, moist, ravenous oral cavity's escapades aside). Wall Street fed on forlorn Baby Boomers staring at retirement, the most dangerous foreign enemy was France, the War on Drugs was a yawn, American zero-goal education embraced its objectives, The Greenhouse Effect plus the Ozone Hole summed to nothing, Hitlary Ramrod Clinton wrote off her thighs and acquiesced as a daughter of Bilitis. Low level conflict policy feelers sought propaganda hegemony over the populace with Armageddon, Deep Impact, and other parables of acerbic Christ returning as a fastball asteroid, low and inside.
Dr. Schund volunteers to weave a safety net suitable to the task, namely that of catching a celestial Mt. Everest thundering in on Pacoima, CA at 40 miles/second. Less than a billion square miles of Mu-logentm hypermolecular fiber spun in a loose weave at a few denier nylon equivalent would mass more than any asteroid but not perceptibly block sunlight. It would be orbital positive defense against everything. The money required for construction and placement would equal total planetary created value for the next thousand years. Not to worry. Hadn't we best toss a few tens of $millions Dr. Schund's way to get the studies - or at least preliminary review of parametric extrapolation of planned study format and content - started? Send cash. Dr. Schund has a spiffy trick for handling lading and ullage.
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