Nuclear fusion occurs when two or more atoms combine, unleashing a large amount of energy.
A new study suggests that it’s not just atoms that undergo fusion. Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider’s LHCb experiment in CERN have evidence for fusion taking place between subatomic particles known as quarks.
“In nuclear fusion, energy is produced by the rearrangement of protons and neutrons,” an accompanying New and Views article notes. “The discovery of an analogue of this process involving particles called quarks has implications for both nuclear and particle physics.”
Quarks come in six flavors
The discovery made when particles smashed together in CERN’s underground ring, which is 27 kilometers (17 miles) long, at almost the speed of light. When studying the data from those collisions, scientists look for odd particles and other unusual things.
However, more impressively they also spotted the fusion of two bottom quarks, which are more energetic than charm quarks. These binded with an energy of 280 MeV, releasing 138 MeV.
Nuclear fusion event between deuterons and tritons that takes place in a hydrogen bomb release just 18 MeV. Lead author Marek Karliner of Tel Aviv University in Israel said the researchers checked to make sure there were no practical applications of this energy release.
[source: Live Science]
