Can we make atoms?

[laklak]

I was thinking about H+ ions, which are a free proton. They'll grab an electron from somewhere.

[JimC]

If you have electrons and protons, you can make hydrogen. You can't make even helium from those hydrogens. And neutrons are unstable so you could not store a gram of them.

Well you could, once you have a working fusion reactor...

[Xamonas Chegwé]

If you have electrons and protons, you can make hydrogen. You can't make even helium from those hydrogens. And neutrons are unstable so you could not store a gram of them.

Well you could, once you have a working fusion reactor...

I am pretty sure they have achieved fusion in several of the prototype reactors. They just haven't made it sustainable and energy-efficient yet. And they've certainly made plenty of Helium using H-bombs!

But that is still making atoms from other atoms (albeit extremely simple Hydrogen atoms.)

Laklak's point is a good one. Hydrogen ions are nothing more than free protons - and they will grab electrons and form Hydrogen atoms and molecules.

Making atoms from anything more fundamental than nucleons and electrons is certainly impossible currently. Quarks simply don't exist except as composite hadrons and the principle of colour confinement keeps it this way.

[jamest]

What sort of technology would we need in order to make any kind of atoms that we like, from fundamental particles?

[JimC]

What sort of technology would we need in order to make any kind of atoms that we like, from fundamental particles?

A very complex technology, developed by thorough-going materialists...

[Xamonas Chegwé]

What sort of technology would we need in order to make any kind of atoms that we like, from fundamental particles?

The difficulty lies in getting hold of fundamental particles in the first place! As I said in my last post, quarks do not and (as far as we understand) can not exist except as part of hadrons. So we are limited to making nucleons (protons and neutrons) from particles that are already composite. We can transmute one kind of hadron into another - the LHC does it all the time - but we cannot make hadrons from raw quarks and gluons.

The only other component of an atom is the electron. These are easily produced and will quite naturally bond to a charged nucleus. So, if we could make a nucleus, all we would need to do is put it close to an electron source - but that is a pretty hefty if...

[JimC]

A more realistic, although technically very different, is to start with common atoms of any sort, disassemble them into neutrons, protons and electrons, then reassemble them to order. It would take energy for the first stage, but you'd get most of it back in the second, as long as they were atoms smaller than iron.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

A more realistic, although technically very different, is to start with common atoms of any sort, disassemble them into neutrons, protons and electrons, then reassemble them to order. It would take energy for the first stage, but you'd get most of it back in the second, as long as they were atoms smaller than iron.

But you're not dealing with fundamental particles, in that case. Protons and Neutrons are composite.

[JimC]

A more realistic, although technically very different, is to start with common atoms of any sort, disassemble them into neutrons, protons and electrons, then reassemble them to order. It would take energy for the first stage, but you'd get most of it back in the second, as long as they were atoms smaller than iron.

But you're not dealing with fundamental particles, in that case. Protons and Neutrons are composite.

True, but I don't think jamest meant to be purist about it...

[Hermit]

A more realistic, although technically very different, is to start with common atoms of any sort, disassemble them into neutrons, protons and electrons, then reassemble them to order. It would take energy for the first stage, but you'd get most of it back in the second, as long as they were atoms smaller than iron.

But you're not dealing with fundamental particles, in that case. Protons and Neutrons are composite.

True, but I don't think jamest meant to be purist about it...

I suspect he was. Basically, it was a rhetorical question. Can we do something he presumes (correctly for the time being) we cannot? See! Therefore God! Take that, Athiests!

If it turned out that we can indeed make, say, oxygen from fundamental particles, he'll ask us if we can make something out of nothing.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

A more realistic, although technically very different, is to start with common atoms of any sort, disassemble them into neutrons, protons and electrons, then reassemble them to order. It would take energy for the first stage, but you'd get most of it back in the second, as long as they were atoms smaller than iron.

But you're not dealing with fundamental particles, in that case. Protons and Neutrons are composite.

True, but I don't think jamest meant to be purist about it...

If he didn't mean "fundamental particles", he shouldn't have said "fundamental particles", should he?

[JimC]

But does he know fundamental particles from his fundamental orifice?

[Xamonas Chegwé]

But does he know fundamental particles from his fundamental orifice?

I sometimes get the impression that he would be troubled trying to locate either.

[Brian Peacock]

I feel there may be a "If the fundamental constituents of the natural world are unobserved and uncreateable how can we observe the natural world and how was it created?" argument on the horizon.