Dennis Whyte

So those are the primary things.

And the reason for this is because helium has features as a nucleus, like the interior part of the atom, that is extremely stable.

And the reason for this is helium has two protons and two neutrons.

These are the things that make up nuclei, that make up all of us.

along with electrons, and because it has two pairs, it's extremely stable.

And for this reason, when you convert the hydrogen into helium, it just wants to stay helium, and it wants to release kinetic energy.

So stars are...

Basically, conversion engines of hydrogen into helium.

And this also tells you why you love fusion.

I mean, because our sun will last 10 billion years approximately.

That's how long the fuel will last.

It is one of the criteria for doing this.

But it's the easiest one to understand.

Why is this?

It's because...

Effectively, what this requires is that these hydrogen ions, which is really the bare nucleus, so they have a positive charge, everything has a positive charge of those ones, is that to get them to trigger this reaction, they must approach within...

distances which are like the size of the nucleus itself because the nature in fact what it's really using is something called the strong nuclear force there's four fundamental forces in the universe this is the strongest one but it has a strange property is that it while it's the strongest force by far it only has impact over distances which are the size of a nucleus so to get put that into what does that mean it's a millionth of a billionth of a meter

Okay, incredibly small distances.

But because the distances are small and the particles have charge, they want to push strongly apart.

Namely, they have repulsion that wants to push them apart.