Timeline for Why isn’t CERN afraid of a fusion reaction in the LHC?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
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| May 14, 2020 at 15:29 | comment | added | JEB | @PM2Ring Ah, you do get it. I was trying to do an estimate in my head, but I forgot the timescale of heat-death, so plus or minus a factor of a googol, and we're still safe. | |
| May 14, 2020 at 8:52 | comment | added | PM 2Ring | I don't quite get your last sentence, JEB. You didn't specify the units of that $10^{100}$, but I guess it doesn't make much difference at that scale if it's seconds, years, or the current age of the universe. ;) | |
| May 14, 2020 at 8:48 | history | edited | PM 2Ring | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Fixed some more typos
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| May 14, 2020 at 8:15 | comment | added | PM 2Ring | The probability of a weak interaction transforming a diproton into a deuteron is on the order of $10^{-26}$. That is, you have to fuse around a gram of protons to produce a single deuteron. | |
| May 14, 2020 at 8:15 | comment | added | PM 2Ring | I'd like to add a little more info about proton + proton fusion. In $p+p\to d+W^+$ a proton converts to a neutron via the weak interaction; that conversion has a very low probability. At the solar core temperature it's relatively easy for 2 protons to overcome their electrostatic repulsion to fuse into a diproton. But the diproton is unstable and it usually decays into 2 protons before the relatively slow weak interaction has a chance to occur. | |
| May 14, 2020 at 7:56 | history | edited | PM 2Ring | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 1 character in body
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| May 13, 2020 at 4:11 | history | answered | JEB | CC BY-SA 4.0 |