a reply to:
oldcarpy
Fission is quite different to Fusion though they share many thing's in common, Fusion is what powers the stars and all element's including what you
are made up of only exist because they were created from what was originally hydrogen in the heart of gigantic short lived stars in the early
universe, to simplify it Fusion is atom's being forced together and turning into heavier and heavier element's and releasing the radiation - you can
imagine it being squeezed out of the atom's if you like, heat and radiation as well as light.
Fusion is something else, sometime's when Atom's are fused in stars they become unstable atom's that can remain unstable for millions or even
billions of years but these atom's that do not want to remain as they are (they are unstable) and so in the right condition's they start to decay
losing excess energy and mass in the form of radiation such as Polonium, Uranium, Plutonium and other radioactive element's and Isotopes of stable
element's.
In some circumstances such as chemical reactions some element's can become isotopic such as carbon isotopes in living organism's.
In a nuclear bomb a dense and as pure as they can make it mass of metallic Plutonium of a highly radioactive and very unstable (atomically speaking)
ball or cylinder is placed, this is usually surrounded at least in early version's of the bomb with a Beryllium sphere, this is because of the
specific property's which help to focus the reaction.
The material is surrounded by shaped explosive charges which are designed to detonate at exactly (or as close to it as they can get) the same time
forcing the dense unstable material of the plutonium to be SQUEEZED together in order to force some of the atom nuclei to impact one another.
(alternatively they use a Vacuum and a plug, the plug of extremely unstable isotopic plutonium or another unstable element is propelled at extreme
velocity into a mass of Plutonium which surrounds' it - like a piston and cylinder - this has much the same effect but for less cost than the older
Manhattan project style bomb and is the sort you will have seen mock up's of being defused on action movies when a plug is removed by someone - whom
in reality would be in heavy radioactive shielded gear or be exposed to a hell of a lot of radiation by handling that material by hand).
As these atomic nuclei impact one another being unstable they become excited (have too much energy and there already unstable nature is made even
more unstable) and in a release of energy they split (fission), this released high energy NEUTRON's which then fly outward like tiny sub atomic
bullet's as well as heat, light and other particle radiation.
Since the plutonium (specifically a highly unstable isotope of an already unstable element so not just any Plutonium) is as pure as possible and the
atom's are as tightly packed together as they can make them this mean's that those High energy neutron's (neutron radiation) then impact other
plutonium nuclei resulting in them then also breaking apart (undergoing fission chain reaction) and releasing yet more radiation including yet more
high energy neutron's and this is called a chain reaction which all happen's so fast that the majority of the plutonium in the bomb is involved in the
reaction (the more of that plutonium that fission's the more efficient and destructive the device is).
The by product other than the explosion, light, heat and radiation as well includes shorter lived radioactive Isotopes, element's whose atomic core
are unstable and have excess sub atomic particles which they lose over time through radioactive decay decaying slowing down to more stable elemental
form's.
Many of these Isotopes produced by Fission are simply not in the same quantity produced by Fusion, the radioactivity of the isotopes can give a
fairly accurate age for them, those isotopes he discovered we can argue very accurately are far too young to be natural occurrences and they are also
indicative of Fission not Fusion, also the dispersal of Fusion and Fission by products especially from explosive vs melt down are very different,
meltdown would be dispersed only through wind, water flow and geological dispersal but of course fission is scattered through explosive scatter as
well.
Fusion only happen's under extreme temperature and pressure as found in the heart of a star or in experimental Fusion reactors, Fission happen's all
the time in nature as element's decay but not in chain reaction's except in the extreme artificial conditions of a nuclear device be that a bomb or a
reactor.
The Isotopic byproducts of Plutonium Fission (nuclear bomb's) and Uranium (reactors) have slightly different fingerprint's due to the plutonium being
higher on the periodic table than Uranium if you like though they do decay back down to the same element's - eventually.
Natural Fission can occur in distinct condition's such as is believed? to have happened at least twice on earth from old discovery's.
In these cases mineral uranium dissolved by and was carried into pocket's in rock by water and deposited there until there was enough for the natural
and slow fission to undergo the much slower chain reaction of uranium fission - meltdown.
www.scientificamerican.com...
This seem's to have been self regulating and the same water acted as natural cooling for these natural reactors.
Another suspected natural reactor site was also discovered under the Swiss or Austrian Alps my memory fails be a little on that.
These natural reactors are still disputed as many believe they were NOT natural but are indicative of a former advanced civilization though given
that they appear natural I believe they have an extremely high possibility of being natural.
en.wikipedia.org...
www.zmescience.com...
The breadcrumb's in this case are the isotopes scattered across the surface of mars in those regions were Fission took place roughly half a billion
years ago, these breadcrumb's can be seen as forensic evidence in the investigation of the murder of a world, there level of decay, quantity of the
isotope etc can be used to determine natural or artificial, fission or fusion reaction and I tend to trust a nuclear physicist whom worked for NASA on
his opinion there.