And when the hydrogen isotopes fuse to make that helium nucleus in the process of them sticking to each other, that releases a lot of energy. They stick to each other very hard, very strongly. Another way of thinking about it is that helium has two protons and two neutrons, and those protons and neutrons are bound to each other. GAZETTE: Why doesn’t it just stay as mass? Why aren’t there just extra bits of mass flying around?ĬOHEN: Mass comes in discrete chunks, and if you add up the mass of a helium and the neutron that comes flying out too in this process, there’s a little bit of a difference. So a little bit of the mass of the hydrogen isotopes that are getting fused together goes into energy, which comes out of this reaction. But how does that create energy?ĬOHEN: Einstein taught us more than a century ago, in his famous formula e = mc2, that you can convert mass into energy. GAZETTE: It sounds like what the scientists did was smash two hydrogen isotopes together to make helium, which has slightly less mass.
This process can release huge amounts of energy as the nuclei combine.
CohenĬOHEN: Fusion is the process of colliding light nuclei with each other to form heavier nuclei. The interview has been edited for clarity and length. Cohen, a professor of chemistry, chemical biology, and physics, to explain what happened and why it matters. That is, by focusing 192 giant lasers on a bit of frozen deuterium and tritium, the lab’s National Ignition Facility created a reaction that produced more energy than it used, a threshold called “ignition.” The long-sought result is a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion, with exciting, if still very far off, implications for renewable energy. Department of Energy reported on Thursday. The Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California last week achieved fusion with a net energy gain, the U.S.
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