Word: hydrogenate
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...sober fact, is a kind of hydrogen bomb that generates its life-giving energy by "fusing" hydrogen into helium. Man's new bombs will not use exactly the same reactions, but they will use similar ones yielding the same end product. When the first of them explodes, a little bit of the searing sun will have hit the earth...
Fission v. Fusion. The new-style "fusion" of hydrogen and the old-style "fission" of uranium have a family resemblance. Both depend on the odd and unexplained fact that atomic nuclei do not weigh as much as the sum of the individual nucleons (protons and neutrons) which they contain. It is as if a dozen apples in a paper bag did not weigh as much as the same apples spilled out on the kitchen table and weighed separately...
...Hydrogen fusion works in the opposite way by forming "paperbag" nuclei out of smaller units. Deuterium (heavy hydrogen), for instance, has one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. When two deuterium nuclei are fused together, they form a helium nucleus (two protons and two neutrons) that weighs less than two deuterium nuclei. As in uranium fission the weight loss turns into free energy. It is this fusion of lighter nuclei into helium that will power the hydrogen bomb...
...Does It. Scientists have long known that a fusion reaction takes place in the sun. Deep under the white-hot surface, the temperature stands at something like 20 million degrees centigrade. Under such extreme conditions all atomic particles are in violent motion. The nuclei of ordinary hydrogen (single protons) zip around with enormous speed. They jostle one another and slam against other nuclei -smashing some and joining others. A complex chain of reactions takes place involving carbon and nitrogen, but the final result is the fusion of hydrogen into helium...
...copy it because they had no way of approaching the temperature of the sun's interior. They found the way on July 16, 1945, when the first uranium bomb exploded at Alamogordo, N. Mex. For an instant the heart of the bomb was hot enough to make hydrogen fuse into helium. Ever since, a hydrogen bomb has been possible...