I guess to overcome electron degeneracy pressure. Nucleus would collide more easily when electrons are stripped away. Not sure if i am conpletely true though
Heat means more vibrations, which means less density and more force needed to compress the matter to the same density. Just compare any solid material to plasma. Or the 100 million kelvin plasma at ITER, which has an absurdly low density (like a high vacuum) but still 1 bar of pressure due to the thermal pressure.
Electron degeneracy pressure is always present when there are electrons, regardless if they are part of an atom or free moving in a plasma.
Higher heat also means more violent collisions. It would be much harder to collide nucleus by just pressing it. But yeah maybe with even more pressure it might happen but nuclear reactions usually happen with high speed collisions.
When electrons are bound to nucleus, it may prevent collision by having an additional layer causing degeneracy pressure between two colliding nucleus. That won’t happen if electrons are unbounded to nucleus. Atleast that’s what i imagine
But you are right regarding the thermal energy making fusions easier, which can happen at any pressure or density with enough velocity. At this point I am not even sure which of the 2 approaches (cold and far denser or hot and far less dense) would be “easier”, where we would have to first define what easier would actually be…
mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
I guess to overcome electron degeneracy pressure. Nucleus would collide more easily when electrons are stripped away. Not sure if i am conpletely true though
Eheran@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Heat means more vibrations, which means less density and more force needed to compress the matter to the same density. Just compare any solid material to plasma. Or the 100 million kelvin plasma at ITER, which has an absurdly low density (like a high vacuum) but still 1 bar of pressure due to the thermal pressure.
Electron degeneracy pressure is always present when there are electrons, regardless if they are part of an atom or free moving in a plasma.
mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
Higher heat also means more violent collisions. It would be much harder to collide nucleus by just pressing it. But yeah maybe with even more pressure it might happen but nuclear reactions usually happen with high speed collisions.
When electrons are bound to nucleus, it may prevent collision by having an additional layer causing degeneracy pressure between two colliding nucleus. That won’t happen if electrons are unbounded to nucleus. Atleast that’s what i imagine
Eheran@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The electron pressure is always there.
But you are right regarding the thermal energy making fusions easier, which can happen at any pressure or density with enough velocity. At this point I am not even sure which of the 2 approaches (cold and far denser or hot and far less dense) would be “easier”, where we would have to first define what easier would actually be…