  The recent PSI Lamb shift experiment and the controversy about proton size
revived the interest in measuring the hyperfine splitting in muonic hydrogen as
an alternative possibility for comparing ordinary and muonic hydrogen
spectroscopy data on proton electromagnetic structure. This measurement
critically depends on the energy dependence of the muon transfer rate to
heavier gases in the epithermal range. The available data provide only
qualitative information, and the theoretical predictions have not been
verified. We propose a new method by measurements of the transfer rate in
thermalized target at different temperatures, estimate its accuracy and
investigate the optimal experimental conditions.
