Question: how much energy we can create with a fusion of two atoms?

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  1. Oh, there is not so much i know about nuclear fusion, but luckily Google knows everything so i can come up with an answer 🙂

    The most common type of nuclear fusion (what’s happening in the sun and in most of the stars, for example) is the fusion of 2 hydrogen atoms into 1 helium atom. With this kind of fusion a small part of the mass of the 2 hydrogen atoms will be converted into energy, actually only 0.67%. However, since you might have heard of E=mc^2 you have to multiply this tiny bit of mass by the speed of light-squared, and that’s only for 2 atoms! if you multiply that to having 2 grams of hydrogen atoms and you would convert that into (almost) 2 grams of helium, you would release an energy of something like 1000 billion joule! Now it is quite clear why a hydrogen bomb can be so powerful!

    Nuclear fusion would of course be a great way to solve our energy problem, however for nuclear fusion to happen you need circumstances like the center of the sun, so billions of degrees and a very high pressure. unfortunately we haven’t found a way on earth (yet) to create those kind of environments in an energy-profitable way…

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