So every other kind of energy we can get is from splitting molecules (combustion) or splitting atoms (fission)
So how come we can get energy from fusing atoms together?
In: Physics
No one has actually bothered to answer your question..
The reason why is because of the famous equation that we’ve all heard of – E=mc^2. You may of heard of that equation but what does it actually mean?
Well what it means is that energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. Ok… so what does *that* mean? What that means is that there is an equivalence between energy and mass, where one can be converted into the other. Not only can mass be converted into energy, but because of the conversion rate even the smallest bits of mass can be converted into a *fuckton* of energy. To give you a sense of what I mean, if you were to convert a paperclip into pure energy it would result in an explosion larger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima or 20x more powerful then the blast that took out Beirut in 2020.
What’s happening with fusion specifically is that you’re essentially taking two little things and squishing them into one big thing, but that one big thing has less mass than the sum of the two individual little things. That left over mass gets converted into energy and because of the reasons explained above even if those two little things are a pair of hydrogen atoms that itty bitty difference in mass results in an enormous release of energy.
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