What’s ten times stronger than nuclear fusion!!?
QUARK FUSION!!
The particles that make up the neutrons and
protons inside of atoms are known as quarks.
And researchers found that when quarks bind
together, energy is produced.
Scientists have already been smashing together
particles at the Large Hadron Collider but
that’s been with hydrogen atoms, not quarks.
At the Large Hadron Collider, particles are
zooming through a a 27 km long ring at near
the speed of light. When particles collide
scientists are poised to collect lots of data.
And sometimes in the data strange particles
will emerge.. Totally unexpectedly! And this
precisely what happened when what’s known
as a “doubly charmed baryon” emerged in
2016. It was made up of two charm quarks!
This publishing of their paper, lead other
researcher to drawing calculations of just
how much energy would be needed to fuse these
quarks together... AND how much energy would
be released. They found, it would take about
130 MeV to fuse the collision of the charm
quarks. But wait- there’s more!
More researchers theorized that if they fused
a different type of quark -- a heavier bottom
quark -- it may produce around 138 MeV … which
is about 8 times more energy than fusing hydrogen
(aka what powers hydrogen bombs)! That’s
a lot of energy!
Of course, you shouldn’t worry about bombs
because the scientists say these types of
quarks won’t live long enough after a collision
for a chain reaction to happen. In other words,
they decay too quickly and won’t be usable
for weapons.
Scientists DO say it’s technically possible
to create this fusion with the Large Hadron
Collider and there may be a good chance that
in the next couple of years this study will
go into action. But before you dream about
a fusion future…Many scientists don't think
this will ever work
Also the amount of energy it'll take to even
combine these together is so high that the
energy getting out of it won't be significantly
much more.
Current clean energy systems are generating
a good amount of energy but with quark fusion,
if scientists can develop a technology to
make it a reality--
Well then we’ll be talking!
Trace actually went to the Large Hadron Collider
a while back, and met scientists making Antimatter
-- learn how they do it, in this video.
Do you think we should keep working to see
if quark fusion could be a thing? Or should
we focus on other clean technologies?
Let us know in the comments and thanks for
watching Seeker.
