Idk how I got onto this but I was just googling shit and I was wondering how we are running out of helium. I read that helium is the one non-renuable element on this planet because it comes from the result of radioactive decay. But from my memory and the D- I got in highschool chemistry, helium is number 2 on the periodic table of elements and hydrogen is number 1, so why can’t we just take a fuck ton of hydrogen, do some chemistry shit and turn it into helium? I know it’s not that simple I just don’t understand why it wouldn’t work.
Edit: I get it, it’s nuclear fusion which is physics, not chemistry. My grades were so back in chemistry that I didn’t take physics. Thank you for explaining it to me!
In: Chemistry
Hydrogen is made of a proton and an electron. Proton has a positive charge, and is the more massive of the two, electron has a negative charge.
Magnets attract when charges are different and push off when charges are the same. Try this with your usual magnets and see how you can squeeze the same sides together.
The force of attraction or repulsion grows way more the closer are the charged objects. Proton is very small so the force to squeeze two of them together is enormous – the sun does it, but only at the very center and very slowly – it takes billions of years for Sun to squeeze all protons together in its core.
The way I was taught, there are four fundamental forces in atomic physics. The strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetic force, and gravity. Smashing atoms together involves the interaction of two forces, electromagnetic force and the strong nuclear force. Electromagnetic force keeps particles with the same charge apart. The protons in the nucleus of the hydrogen atoms have the same charge so they want to stay apart. However, neutrons and protons are attracted to other neutrons and protons by the strong nuclear force. The strong nuclear force is powerful enough to overcome electromagnetic force but only at extremely close distances. So you can smush two hydrogen atoms together and make a helium atom but you need to use enough force to get the nuclei close enough to each other for the strong nuclear force to take hold in order to do it.
tl;dr its like trying to smash together 2 magnets that repel each other, it takes a lot of energy to make it happen.
Each Hydrogen nucleus is positively charged because it is just one proton.
Just like 2 normal magnets with similar polarity, hydrogen nuclei repel each other, and the force increases as the magnets get closer together. Unlike normal magnets, hydrogen nuclei are entirely positively charged, there is no “negative side” of the hydrogen nucleus. Imagine trying to push together 2 very tiny and very strong magnets that repel each other.
In advanced physics terms, the amount of energy needed to get the 2 nuclei close enough is called the [Coulomb barrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb_barrier). Once the barrier is broken with enough energy, the 2 Hydrogen nuclei smash together, create a Helium nucleus, and actually create a lot of energy – even more than was needed to break the barrier. This is called nuclear fusion. It is hard to control and use all of that energy – the energy either escapes and the reaction fizzles out or increases exponentially and leads to a nuclear explosion.
There are forces that are incredibly strong at short distances that are responsible for keeping atoms together. They work kind of like magnetism. If you try to push two magnets together (the positive ends, for example) they will repel each other. Same goes for atoms. Two hydrogen atoms will work together to form molecules but if you try to get them so close that their insides (the nucleus) touch then they will strongly push back. You need tremendous heat and/or pressure to overcome that force. Stars can do this by their enormous gravity. On earth we’ve found ways to do it but it takes a lot of energy and technology to do so. The most straightforward way is to make a fission nuclear bomb and surround hydrogen so that when it explodes it forces that hydrogen together. This creates an even bigger explosion. We call that a fusion bomb.
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