#Helium #Hydrogen #Chemistry #Physics #NuclearFusion
Hey there! If you’ve ever wondered why we can’t just take two hydrogen atoms and smash them together to make helium, you’re not alone. It’s a question that has puzzled many, and there’s actually a very interesting scientific explanation behind it. Let’s dive into the world of chemistry and physics to understand why this seemingly simple transformation isn’t so straightforward.
## The Basics: Hydrogen and Helium
Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, let’s start with the basics. Hydrogen is the first element on the periodic table and is the most abundant element in the universe. Its simple structure consists of just one proton and one electron. On the other hand, helium is the second element on the periodic table and is known for its use in balloons, airships, and even cryogenics due to its extremely low boiling point.
Now, let’s address the burning question: why can’t we just take a bunch of hydrogen and magically turn it into helium? Here’s why:
### Fusion vs. Chemistry
The process of turning hydrogen into helium goes beyond simple chemistry – it’s a phenomenon known as nuclear fusion. This is where the magic happens, and it’s not so straightforward. Here’s why:
### 1. Nuclear Fusion
Nuclear fusion is the process in which two atomic nuclei come together to form a heavier nucleus. In the case of turning hydrogen into helium, this process involves the fusion of two hydrogen isotopes – deuterium and tritium – to create helium and a neutron.
### 2. Extreme Conditions
The catch is that nuclear fusion requires incredibly high temperatures and pressure to occur. We’re talking about temperatures in the range of millions of degrees Celsius – far beyond anything we can achieve on Earth without specialized equipment, like what’s found in the heart of the sun!
### 3. Energy Barrier
Another barrier to achieving nuclear fusion is the Coulomb barrier, which is the electrostatic force of repulsion between positively charged nuclei. Overcoming this barrier requires an enormous amount of energy, making it a significant challenge for scientists to replicate in controlled settings.
### The Quest for Sustainable Energy
Understanding the complexities of nuclear fusion and the barriers to achieving it on Earth helps shed light on the ongoing efforts to harness this process for sustainable energy production. Scientists and engineers are working on developing fusion reactors that can replicate the conditions necessary for controlled nuclear fusion, with the potential to generate clean and abundant energy.
### The Takeaway
So, there you have it! The process of turning hydrogen into helium isn’t as simple as mixing chemicals in a beaker. It involves the intricate world of nuclear fusion, extreme temperatures, and high-energy barriers. The pursuit of unlocking the potential of nuclear fusion for sustainable energy holds promise for the future, and it’s a fascinating area of scientific research.
In conclusion, the next time you gaze up at a helium-filled balloon, you can appreciate the complex journey of helium from the depths of the universe to our own Earth. While it may not be as simple as smashing two hydrogen atoms together, the science behind it is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
I hope this sheds some light on the subject, and if you have any more questions about the wonders of chemistry and physics, feel free to ask! 🌌🎈
That would be nuclear fusion and the sun does it quite well.
Unfortunately, it takes 16 million degrees and a pressure of 250 billion atmospheres to make it happen.
While it is possible to produce small amounts of helium through nuclear fusion, the energy required to do so currently exceeds the energy produced. Therefore, artificial production of helium is not economically viable at this time *Google*
So we can actually do that, but it wouldn’t be chemistry but rather nuclear physics.
No chemical reaction can change the number of protons in an atom, it can only join atoms together in a molecule or break down molecules.
To perform a transmutation between elements you need to use a particle accelerator or nuclear reactor to throw protons into a nucleus or use neutrons to knock protons out of a nucleus.
You’ve just described a nuclear fusion reactor. We’re working on it!
It takes a lot of energy to fuse two hydrogen atoms together, and thus isn’t economical at the moment.
There’s also lots of Helium-3 on the moon. Establishing humans on the moon permanently isn’t just about scientific achievement.
You can’t just hold an atom, that’s the difficult part. If you could figure out how to grab and hold one, I’m sure the rest would be simple, but just keep in mind that even then, you’d just have one helium atom. You need billions and billions of them for any practical use, so the process had better be incredibly energy efficient and replicable, if you want it to be practicable.
We literally can and do exactly that. That’s what nuclear fusion reactors do, and there’s been some exciting breakthroughs with those lately. Google ITER etc.
>so why can’t we just take a fuck ton of hydrogen, do some chemistry shit and turn it into helium
because like charges repel, so getting the two H nuclei close enough together that they actually fuse requires squeezing the hydrogens together REALLY hard while also heating it to literally *millions* of degrees. [This is a machine we currently use to do it.](https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/2022/better-nuclear-fusion-2.jpg)
So the real problem, like so often, is actually money. We DO turn hydrogen into helium, but it takes a billion-dollar fusion reactor to make fractions of a gram of helium this way. All the money in the world couldn’t make a useful amount of helium this way via any method we know of.
TLDR: It’s theoretically possible *and we’ve done it*, but it’s incredibly expensive and makes tiny amounts of helium, so it wouldn’t be worth it.
Don’t forget neutrons. Helium is 2 protons AND 2 neutrons, smashing 2 protons (“normal” hydrogen) wouldn’t work at all.
The process of fusion is a little longer, and there are prototypes to make it here, but also remember that atoms are really really small. Even if you made like an atom a second it would take centuries to reach even a gram, so fusion for material purposes wouldn’t be feasible anyway compared to the amount of energy it’d be used for
A thermonuclear hydrogen bomb can do this, a nuclear weapon is basically a miniature star that only lives for a few micro-seconds to a few minutes. The trouble is finding a way to do it that doesn’t make enormous craters in the planet’s surface – we think it can be done, we just aren’t sure how (for now).
Well you can. But we can’t control individual atoms that well and catch the results. And then if we could we’d have to do it a LOT. Cause there’s a LOT of helium atoms in one kg of helium….So if you could figure out a way great but at the moment there’s no real profitable way to harvest the results of colliders aside from research purposes
You’re actually onto something, because this is more or less how helium is generated in nature– through the nuclear fusion of hydrogen in stars such as the sun. Unfortunately, we’re a long way from being able to make helium renewable, because controlled nuclear fusion is still very much in its infancy.
Lots of answers describing fusion. The real answer to your question is what’s called the electroweak force. In this case the two positive charges (the nuclei of the two hydrogen atoms) will try to move away from each other, just like a magnet would if you try and make the positive ends touch. Also, this force gets stronger the closer you get.
That said, it’s not impossible. There’s another force, the nuclear force harnessed in fusion (and fission), that is even more powerful when the particles get really close. But to overcome the electroweak force to get to point where the nuclear force takes over takes a lot of energy.
There have been a bunch of attempts to “do some chemistry shit” as you put it to get helium/fusion. There was a big stir in the 80s when some credible scientists said they’d figured it out. They’ve generally been disproven now but there’s a small, mostly discredited, group of folks still going after what’s called “cold fusion”, many of whom are doing some chemistry shit to make it happen
Well, it doesn’t really work that way.
First the issue isn’t that we’re going to just “run out” of helium. Rather, as helium reserves get depleted and harder to extract, the price of helium will increase.
Now, we can create helium but not from regular hydrogen. An ordinary hydrogen atom just has 1 proton in its nucleus and no neutrons. This is a problem because if you try to smash two protons together, 9999 times out of 10,000 they’ll just fly apart again. Neutrons are needed to hold the nucleus together.
So to get fusion to work on Earth, we need rarer kinds of hydrogen: hydrogen that has neutrons. We have deuterium (1 proton and 1 neutron) which exists in regular water, but you have to purify it to get any use out it. That takes a lot of money and energy. Then there is tritium (1 proton and 2 neutrons). That one we have to make, which is super expensive. Tritium is about 500 times more expensive than gold.
But to turn tritium and deuterium into helium, we still have to smash them together really hard. Ridiculously hard. That takes a lot of energy and you still only get a little bit of helium out of it.
Now, a hydrogen bomb does actually create helium by fusing these rare types of hydrogen, but they’re still very expensive and the tremendous explosion makes it impossible to collect the helium.
If it hasn’t been mentioned yet, you’d actually need 3 or 4 hydrogen atoms, with one or two of them undergoing Beta+ decay, turning the proton(s) into neutrons.
He-3 has 2 protons and 1 neutron, while He-4 has two of each.
You really need at least one neutron to hold that nucleus together. The 2 protons have a positive charge and repel one another without the strong nuclear force.
Using an isotope of Hydrogen called deuterium would work a lot better. It’s H-2 (has one neutron and one proton). Having the right conditions (heat & pressure) and these guys will fuse into He-4 without requiring any beta decay.
Hydrogen is made of a proton and an electron. Proton has a positive charge, and is the more massive of the two, electron has a negative charge.
Magnets attract when charges are different and push off when charges are the same. Try this with your usual magnets and see how you can squeeze the same sides together.
The force of attraction or repulsion grows way more the closer are the charged objects. Proton is very small so the force to squeeze two of them together is enormous – the sun does it, but only at the very center and very slowly – it takes billions of years for Sun to squeeze all protons together in its core.
The way I was taught, there are four fundamental forces in atomic physics. The strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetic force, and gravity. Smashing atoms together involves the interaction of two forces, electromagnetic force and the strong nuclear force. Electromagnetic force keeps particles with the same charge apart. The protons in the nucleus of the hydrogen atoms have the same charge so they want to stay apart. However, neutrons and protons are attracted to other neutrons and protons by the strong nuclear force. The strong nuclear force is powerful enough to overcome electromagnetic force but only at extremely close distances. So you can smush two hydrogen atoms together and make a helium atom but you need to use enough force to get the nuclei close enough to each other for the strong nuclear force to take hold in order to do it.
tl;dr its like trying to smash together 2 magnets that repel each other, it takes a lot of energy to make it happen.
Each Hydrogen nucleus is positively charged because it is just one proton.
Just like 2 normal magnets with similar polarity, hydrogen nuclei repel each other, and the force increases as the magnets get closer together. Unlike normal magnets, hydrogen nuclei are entirely positively charged, there is no “negative side” of the hydrogen nucleus. Imagine trying to push together 2 very tiny and very strong magnets that repel each other.
In advanced physics terms, the amount of energy needed to get the 2 nuclei close enough is called the [Coulomb barrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb_barrier). Once the barrier is broken with enough energy, the 2 Hydrogen nuclei smash together, create a Helium nucleus, and actually create a lot of energy – even more than was needed to break the barrier. This is called nuclear fusion. It is hard to control and use all of that energy – the energy either escapes and the reaction fizzles out or increases exponentially and leads to a nuclear explosion.
There are forces that are incredibly strong at short distances that are responsible for keeping atoms together. They work kind of like magnetism. If you try to push two magnets together (the positive ends, for example) they will repel each other. Same goes for atoms. Two hydrogen atoms will work together to form molecules but if you try to get them so close that their insides (the nucleus) touch then they will strongly push back. You need tremendous heat and/or pressure to overcome that force. Stars can do this by their enormous gravity. On earth we’ve found ways to do it but it takes a lot of energy and technology to do so. The most straightforward way is to make a fission nuclear bomb and surround hydrogen so that when it explodes it forces that hydrogen together. This creates an even bigger explosion. We call that a fusion bomb.
We aren’t actually running out of helium, it’s just propaganda to slow energy production and increase prices with demand. Helium bleeds from rocks. Usable helium typically comes from gas wells.
Like you’re five? Cool
Atoms that are the same don’t like to touch each other. They’re like the magnet toys some kids get, but much stronger. Can’t get the north side to touch another north side unless you push reaaaaly hard. Unfortunately, we don’t really have the ability to push them that hard because it costs lost of money (for you older kids: it also takes a lot of heat and pressure) and is really hard to do.