Recent content by loreak

It can't happen in the bound state because electrons can't exist in between their shells, they must make a complete quantum jump to the next shell or be ionized out of the electron where they can then absorb many wavelengths because they are not in shells any longer. The act of absorbing the...

As photons travel through a material they are bouncing back and forth and being absorbed and re-emitted, so the overall "speed of light" is slower than absolute c because their path is not a straight line through the material.

Why are you even asking about Iron when physics shows that fusing 2 Iron atoms USES energy. The only reason you get energy from fusion of lighter particles is because their resulting mass after fusing is less than the original masses added together. Fusing 2 iron atoms together results in a...

The strong force also increases its power with distance within the hadron, so it is quite different from gravity in that perspective.

yeah I didnt think about that, the sun is a plasma so its simply free floating nuclei coalescing.

That sounds pretty accurate to me, there are proposed sizes for electrons and quarks but the nature of the quantum world makes such measurements somewhat vague since each particle is a wave of probability. Couldn't you make a fairly accurate estimate using degenerate matter's maximum density...

Well we were talking about fusion at the center of a star during normal behavior so Iron does not fuse specifically due to the reason you stated, all elements above that are created during more energetic events such as supernova. I wasn't saying it was impossible

Oxygen is larger because ithas more electrons in higher orbitals so you are going to lose thenet difference between the 2 fused atoms. I was picturing 2 hydrogen atoms combining to form helium which still uses the first orbital but any element below iron can fuse

It is a virtual particle that transmits force so there are many of them being transferred between individual particles letting them know how to react.

I would think you would basically lose one atom of volume so the sun would physically be denser by volume overall. However you have to remember that at the core of the sun the reason they are fusing is because the densities are so extreme as well as their kinetic energy from being so hot, but...

There are multiple reasons but the primary one would be the electro-magnetic force that keeps electrons from getting too close. Think of each atom as surrounded by electrons and they are all negative charge so they have a repulsive force on each other preventing you from moving one atom through...