Unclear fusion Pratt 3

[Genome]

Consider deuterium. Take away its electron. It becomes a boson. I
mentioned bosons in 'It's a fundamental universe'. Bosons like to get
together and occupy the same energy/space.

Why doesn't it go bang and turn into helium?

Look at the energy per nucleon curve. If that wasn't there the universe
would be something different.

Things do depend on uncertainty in position though.

DNA

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 10 Apr 2004 14:55:09 +0100, "Genome" <Genome@nothere.com>
wrote:

Consider deuterium. Take away its electron. It becomes a boson. I
mentioned bosons in 'It's a fundamental universe'. Bosons like to get
together and occupy the same energy/space.

Why doesn't it go bang and turn into helium?

The electrostatic repulsion between two protons is fierce, so you need
a lot of pressure (or velocity) to push them close enough that the
strong nuclear force kicks in and glues them together. If you fire
them at each other in an accelerator, you'll get a lot of near misses,
billiard-ball elastic collisions where they almost stick but at the
last attosecond slime past each other because of the huge
electrostatic repulsion. I think you'll get inelastics too, with
photons or something kicked out and wasting energy.

Room-temperature neutrons can just sort of casually saunter into a
nucleus and blow it up. Protons and antiprotons snuggle up like
bunnies.

John

 

[Dave VanHorn]

Room-temperature neutrons can just sort of casually saunter into a
nucleus and blow it up. Protons and antiprotons snuggle up like
bunnies.

Exploding bunnies, that is.

Interesting point though, leaving the electron on probably helps, since it
masks the positive charge till a bit later.. But it probably dosen't help
much, because the nucleus is so tiny.

 

[Rich Grise]

"Dave VanHorn" <dvanhorn@cedar.net> wrote in message
news:soidnenWI99UjeXdRVn-hA@comcast.com...

Room-temperature neutrons can just sort of casually saunter into a
nucleus and blow it up. Protons and antiprotons snuggle up like
bunnies.

Exploding bunnies, that is.

Interesting point though, leaving the electron on probably helps, since
it
masks the positive charge till a bit later.. But it probably dosen't help
much, because the nucleus is so tiny.

What's smaller than Nanotech? Picotech? Just build sub-nanoscopic

manipulators
out of neutronium, and grab four individual hydrogen atoms by the protons,
and hold them together until they release the appropriate amount of energy.
One of the engineering challenges would then, of course, be how to capture
that energy. I think if you design the picomanipulators properly, you could
have the alpha particle get kicked out the same direction every time,
making a nifty torch ship motor. Probably do some pretty decent MHD, too.

Anybody know enough nuclear physics to calculate out how hot (i.e. fast)
the helium/alpha exhaust would be going? (clearly, you have to dump the
electrons as well - pointing that stream could be interesting as well.)

Cheers!
Rich