4 ms·
I'm guessing that whatever mechanism is trapping the hydrogen needs more energy to kick deuterium loose because of the mass difference. It'd be interesting to g
by GravitasFailure 5y ago
I'm guessing that whatever mechanism is trapping the hydrogen needs more energy to kick deuterium loose because of the mass difference. It'd be interesting to get a closer look at the technology.
- gus_massa 5y agoThat's a possible explanation, but the difference of energy to break the bonds is probably small, so a small increase of the frequency of the light in the laser should fix it. I suspect they are using some usual high power laser that is available on shelf, so it's not easy to choose the frequency arbitrarily. It's very unlikely that the usual on shelf available laser has the right frequency to remove normal Hydrogen but not Deuterium.
- GravitasFailure 5y agoYeah, bond energy itself is going to be the same regardless of isotope (or at least a negligibly small difference), so my guess is whatever mechanism that is kicking the hydrogen free is relying something more like a kinetic recoil from the photon where the mass is far more relevant. Of course, without being able to take a proper look under the hood at how they're actually storing the hydrogen, this is all rank speculation.