Word: protons
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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...
...ingredient will be tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen which was discussed guardedly in the latest report of the Atomic Energy Commission. The nucleus of tritium has one proton and two neutrons. When it is struck by a highspeed proton (a nucleus of ordinary hydrogen), the two combine into helium and yield a great jolt of energy (see chart...
...radically new in design. Its magnet will be a massive hollow ring with a vacuum chamber inside it. Driven by subtly timed electrical pushes, atomic particles will circle faster & faster around the chamber until their speed comes close to the speed of light. Berkeley scientists calculate that when a proton has circled around the chamber something over a million times, it will have six billion electron volts of energy...
...Binding Force. Before World War II, Germany's Werner Heisenberg theorized mathematically that the protons and neutrons in a nucleus might bat electric charges rapidly back & forth among themselves. While a particle had possession of a charge, it would be a proton. When it lost the charge, it would become a neutron. Heisenberg reasoned that such "charge exchange" might explain the binding force, but he couldn't prove...
Last week Nobelman Lawrence announced that California scientists had found evidence at last. When their highspeed neutrons hit the wall of an ionization chamber, protons bounced back. These were the neutrons themselves, said Lawrence, turned into protons. When a neutron came close to a proton, the proton's electric charge oscillated rapidly between the two. When the neutron passed on, it sometimes carried the charge with it, and was thus a proton...