deuterium and nuclear fusion   GROUP: Members   Report this Feb.
09 2003, 4:54 pm  is duterium used in nuclear fusion and if it
is, then aren’t trek ships powered by a kind of nuclear
fusion????   GROUP: Members  POSTS: 228  Report this Feb. 09
2003, 5:45 pm  !Warning! !Long article! If you want to know how
deuterium relates to Star Trek (and don’t want to know how
fusion works) skip to the bottom now.  First you get hydrogen.
It is the simplest element with one proton and one electron.
This hydrogen is then heated to between 2 and 20 million degrees
Fahrenheit to produce a substance called plasma, the fourth
state of matter. solid --- liquid --- gas --- plasma It is a
state when the electron (normally orbiting the nucleus) gets
ripped off and free-floats around because of the extreme
temperature. Note: plasma is extremely hard to contain because
it vaporizes anything it comes in contact with so it must be
contained with magnets. This is why fusion is so hard to produce
safely.  The next step is two protons c