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Well, it is fiction: in Isaac Asimov's stories there are "nuclear amplifiers" that magically (fiction without even an attempt of explanation) produce a beam of W-bosons, thus amplifying the (fictional) fusion reactions in spaceships making them explode.

In a part of these stories, those amplifiers are also used to fasten the natural decay of uranium.

As far as I know, fusion is limited by the weak interaction and if such a magical W-boson generating device really existed, it might increase the fusion rate.

But would that have any influence on the natural fission rate of uranium? I doubt but don't know.

Gyro Gearloose
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    The fission rate depends on the energy difference between the products and the initial nucleus (as well as how big the momentum space is): this is presumably highly dependent on the strong force, but likely less affected by the weak force which mainly does flavor change. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/658605/how-do-the-strong-and-weak-forces-relate-to-nuclear-fission-and-fusion – Anders Sandberg Feb 21 '24 at 19:18
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    W bosons have a very short lifetime half-life of about 3×10−25 s, so no , they cannot act as nuclear amplifiers a la science fiction. (number from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W_and_Z_bosons – anna v Feb 21 '24 at 19:21
  • @AndersSandberg so even if such a magical device existed, it would be irrelevant to nuclear decay by fission. – Gyro Gearloose Feb 21 '24 at 19:33
  • @annav so your point is that a W-boson wouldn't make it to the target even if near to light speed. But what about muons? – Gyro Gearloose Feb 21 '24 at 19:37
  • @GyroGearloose - To do a good thought experiment you need to constrain it so it can have a clear answer. If you start allowing bombardment with any particle, there is no telling what can happen (since e.g. the muons could have extreme energy and spallate the nuclei). The question makes sense if it is something like "if the weak/strong force had its strength locally changed, how does fission change?" It does not make sense if you try to figure out how the fictional device is supposed to actually work. – Anders Sandberg Feb 21 '24 at 21:01
  • @AndersSandberg right you are. So what to do? The comments have given me the information I had asked for. Delete the question? Improve it in what way? Or Let it just hang around as a curious piece of thought? – Gyro Gearloose Feb 21 '24 at 21:07

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