04 Why doesn't fusion occur anywhere else in nature?
Description
This article is from the Fusion FAQ, by Robert F. Heeter heeter1@llnl.gov with numerous contributions by others.
04 Why doesn't fusion occur anywhere else in nature?
Current scientific knowledge indicates that very little fusion
occurs anywhere else in nature. The reason is because in order
to get two nuclei to fuse, you first have to get them close together.
(This is because the nuclear forces involved in fusion only act
at short range.) However, because the two nuclei are both positively
charged, they repel each other electrically. Nuclei will not fuse
unless either (a) they collide with enough energy to overcome the
electrical repulsion, or (b) they find a "sneaky" way to circumvent
their repulsion (see muon-catalyzed fusion in section 4). The
energy required for fusion is so high that fusion only occurs in
appreciable amounts once the temperature gets over 10 million
degrees Kelvin, so (a) doesn't happen anywhere outside of stars.
Current knowledge suggests that the sort of processes that would
allow sneaky-fusion as in (b) are very rare, so there just isn't
much fusion in the everyday world.
Continue to:
My Books
