If there’s a helium shortage, why can’t we make more by shooting electrons at hydrogen?
In: Chemistry
Helium has an extra proton (and usually neutrons) compared to Hydrogen. Adding an electron would just give you negatively charged hydrogen.
Adding those particles to the nucleus basically involves squeezing hydrogen atoms together really, really tight. We’re not able to do this in a controlled manner without a huge input of energy. Even then, the amount of hydrogen fused is tiny. You couldn’t really do this at industrial scale.
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