Discovered: A (Theoretical) Fusion Technique 8 Times Stronger Than One In H-Bomb

CERN, which houses the Large Hadron Collider. (Credit: Dominionart/Shutterstock) When hydrogen atoms fuse together, they release a vast amount of energy. That's the principle that makes hydrogen bombs so frighteningly powerful, and it's part of what powers our sun as well. Now, researchers from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) say they've uncovered a kind of theoretical particle fusion that's almost eight times more energetic than the fusion of two hydrogen atoms. The discovery, reported in Nature this week, came during the course of an experiment aimed at making a doubly charmed baryon. That's some heady physics-speak, but baryons are just a class of sub-atomic particle — both protons and neutrons are baryons — and the "charmed" moniker simply refers to the kind of quarks — the tiny particles that comprise larger ones like protons and neutrons — it's made out of. So, a doubly-charmed baryon is a particle made from ...