Moontanman Posted November 3, 2017 Posted November 3, 2017 An energy release so powerful physicists considered keeping it a secrete. Fusing two bottom quarks release 8 times as much energy as hydrogen fusion! https://www.livescience.com/60847-charm-quark-fusion-subatomic-hydrogen-bomb.html? Quote Energetic events at the subatomic level are measured in megaelectronvolts (MeV), and when two bottom quarks fuse, the physicists found, they produce a whopping 138 MeV. That's about eight times more powerful than one of the individual nuclear fusion events that takes place in hydrogen bombs 1
MigL Posted November 3, 2017 Posted November 3, 2017 Aren't bottom quarks a decay product of the Higgs boson? Seems like a lot of trouble to go to... Build an LHC. Search for a few Higgs particles. Collect their decay products. Build a bomb with a couple GeV yield.
Carrock Posted November 3, 2017 Posted November 3, 2017 There was a quark bomb years ago in a TV serial called "Whoops, Apocalypse." I don't think it had a happy ending.
swansont Posted November 3, 2017 Posted November 3, 2017 You can't have quarks on their own, and bottom quarks decay quickly anyway, so you can't have a collection of these in order to make a bomb. They don't describe the conditions of the reaction, other than to say it's a "one-trick pony". It has to be an offshoot of some other interaction taking place in the collider.
Sensei Posted November 3, 2017 Posted November 3, 2017 12 hours ago, Moontanman said: An energy release so powerful physicists considered keeping it a secrete. Fusing two bottom quarks release 8 times as much energy as hydrogen fusion! Ehem.. Decay of neutral pion [math]\pi^0[/math] releases ~ 135 MeV, two gamma photons.. 1
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