Word: hydrogenate
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Fusion, the process that powers the sun, has been pegged for years as a possible solution to the world's energy problems because the huge amount of energy it produces is fueled primarily by hydrogen, which exists abundantly in water...
...occurs when two small atoms combine to form a larger atom, releasing energy. The Utah researchers reported that when they ran an electric current through a flask containing heavy water and palladium, a sharp increase in water temperature occurred. The pair claimed that atoms of deuterium (a form of hydrogen found in heavy water) entered the palladium and fused together into helium atoms...
...physicists offered several theories about where the Utah experiments had gone wrong. Pons and Fleischmann claimed that they had caused the nuclei of deuterium atoms, a heavy form of hydrogen, to fuse together to form helium, thus releasing radiation and heat energy. But, the physicists suggested, the radiation detected might have come from radon that was already present in the laboratory's air. The helium reported could also have seeped into the apparatus from...
Nonetheless, while the evidence is suggestive, there is still no clear understanding of what is going on. In their experiment, Pons and Fleischmann immersed electrodes of palladium and platinum in a bath of heavy water -- water whose ordinary hydrogen has been replaced with an isotope called deuterium. When they passed a current through the electrodes, the contraption produced heat. They concluded that deuterium ions had moved into the spaces between palladium atoms and fused together to form helium, giving off heat in the process...
Most of the attempts have used multi-billion dollar techniques to reproduce the incredible pressures and temperatures in the center of the sun, where fusion occurs freely. Scientists have used either powerful magnets to keep the hot hydrogen plasma--at about 200 million degrees Centigrade--from touching anything physical or huge lasers to heat a small pellet of deuterium to similar temperatures...