I mean, I get the repercussions, but if they are so insanely small, how do you pull it apart? How do you only get one at a time done too – there must be bazillions in any one area so do they split a specific one or it’s just the first one along?
In: Physics
A couple of people have already pointed out that scientists don’t split individual atoms… they just “spray and pray” in a particle accelerator like the LHC… and in a nuclear reactor or a nuclear bomb it’s a random process that naturally happens when you put enough uranium-235 atoms close together:
U-235 is naturally unstable, occasionally an atom falls apart just because it does; the neutron it releases has loads of energy and if it’s close to loads of other densely packed U-235 atoms it’s likely to set off another atom… everything sets everything else off and kaboom.
Interestingly / crazily, it looks like there might have been at least one [naturally-occurring “nuclear reactor” on Earth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS53AA_WaUk) – a natural deposit of uranium rich enough that a limited chain reaction got going?
Having said that, I know this if different but [IBM have made an animation by moving individual atoms around](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idn28jMrtcA) and taking pictures of them. And that’s pretty cool. But atomic nuclei are held together so strongly that if you had a single atom in a grip, I’ve got no idea how you’d get enough energy in one place to hit it hard and split that one atom?
Latest Answers