In the 1950s, deuterium was used in thermonuclear weapons because nuclear fusion of deuterium atoms (or of deuterium and
the heavier hydrogen isotope, tritium) releases tremendous energy.
The target itself is a tiny hollow shell filled with
the heavy hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium.
To understand the origin of Earth's water, scientists have fingerprinted potential sources, like asteroids and comets, using the ratio of light to
heavy hydrogen isotopes.
Not exact matches
Hydrogen atoms contained in water readily bond with the
heavy isotope to form hydrochloric acid gas, which then leaks into space — leaving more of the lighter
isotope behind.
As precipitation moves inland, water with the
heavier form of
hydrogen falls out first, which creates predictable patterns of the stable
isotopes ratios of precipitation across continents.
Next, Agee and his colleagues used a laser to extract water molecules trapped within minerals in the meteorite and fed them into a mass spectrometer to calculate the ratio of deuterium, a
heavy isotope of
hydrogen, to ordinary
hydrogen.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is a multinational collaboration that represents one of the world's largest attempts to fuse deuterium and tritium, two
heavy isotopes of
hydrogen.
That's because during evaporation, water molecules containing deuterium, a
heavy isotope of
hydrogen made of one proton and one neutron, get left behind in the ocean.
When ocean storms bump into mountains, raindrops burdened with
heavy isotopes of oxygen and
hydrogen are the first to precipitate.
One common technique for tracking a drug's fate is to label its molecular framework with
heavier isotopes of
hydrogen (either deuterium or tritium).
The energy crisis was over; all you needed was palladium electrodes and
heavy water to achieve the room - temperature fusion of deuterium, a
heavier isotope of
hydrogen.
Pons and Fleischmann asserted that passing a current through
heavy water — water containing deuterium, a
heavy isotope of
hydrogen — between palladium electrodes produced a huge amount of heat.
SNO uses «
heavy water» (in which the
isotope deuterium replaces «normal»
hydrogen) to detect all three flavors of neutrinos.
When completed in 2018, the reactor will fuse together two
heavy isotopes of
hydrogen to release vast quantities of energy.
Deuterium (or
heavy hydrogen) is a fragile
isotope that can not survive the high temperatures achieved at the centers of stars.