Scientists have dicovered a new type of fusion that is 8 to 10 times more powerful than conventional fusion. Yet, if the scientists felt that it may have some dangerous applications (i.e., new fusion bomb), they would not have published their discovery.
Conventional Fusion Reactor
Conventional fusion reactors, still in the experimental stage, are in the shape of a torus (donut) and turn deuterium (H2) and tritium (H3) into helium and neutrons.
The interior of the reactor can exceed a temperature of 300 million degrees Celcius, 20 times hotter than the center of the Sun.
Imagine a Quark Reactor
Two physicists, Marek Karliner from Tel Aviv University and Jonathan L. Rosner from University of Chicago discovered fusion of sub-atomic particles called quarks, could produce 8 to 10 times more energy than fusion of hydrogen atoms.
Quarks
Quarks are elementary particles.
Quarks are categorized into three pairs or six types: up/down, charm/strange, and top/bottom. Quarks also have the characteristic of having a fractional charge. When quarks join together they form composite particles called hadrons. The most stable form of hadrons are protons and electrons.
Quark Fusion
Three years ago Karliner and Rosner predicted that the fusion of quarks could form a new type of particle. Experimental physicists are CERN discovered a new type of particle call a baryon. The baryon is a composite of two heavy quarks, "charm" and "light quark". The baryon particle exactly matched the prediction made by Karliner and Rosner. The experimental discovery confirmed Karliner and Rosner's theorectical prediction of quark fusion.
However, the practical application of quark fusion is far from technically feasible at this time. This is because heavy quarks only exist for 1 trillionth of a second. This makes the containment of a large mass of heavy quarks nearly impossible with today's technology.
Sources and Full Articles
MELTING QUARKS CAN PRODUCE 10 TIMES TIMES THE ENERGY OF NUCLEAR FUSION, The Jerusalem Post, 5 November 2017
Hotter than the Sun: JET – Earth’s biggest fusion reactor, in Culham, The Register, 25 September 2017
This fusion reaction is so powerful that physicists nearly buried the results when they discovered it, Gears Of Biz, 5 November 2017
Quark-level analogue of nuclear fusion with doubly-heavy baryons, Cornell University Library, 8 August 2017
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