Re: Heavy Protons & Life Without Hydrogen

On Jul 28, 9:01 am, Russell Wallace <russell.no.s...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Logan Kearsley wrote:

This doesn't work, alas. In this scenario, n + n doesn't give you
deuterium, it gives you a dineutron. If you add deuterium by hand, it
rapidly decays into dineutrons. Ditto for all the heavier elements.
There'll never be any atomic matter, nothing ever except blobs of
neutrons of various sizes.

A deuteron is a bound state of a neutron and proton. If the binding
energy is more than the rest mass energy of an electron and the
difference in rest mass energy of a neutron and proton, the reaction
n+n -> D+e+nu_bar
will happen spontaneously, in the same way that
p+p -> D+positron+nu
in our world. Neutron-neutron fusion would be mediated by the weak
nuclear force, so the cross section will be small. However, with no
Coulomb barrier, it will proceed much more rapidly than proton proton
fusion in our world (assuming all the rest of the physics works out
the same, with various caveats about the reaction rates converging at
very high (more than stellar core) temperatures).

Luke

.

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