On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 5:44 PM, <mix...@bigpond.com> wrote: In order to overcome the repulsion, they need to strike another nucleus at > high > energy. The need for high energy implies that they must get lucky, and hit > another nucleus before they lose too much energy to ionization. > Even if they do collide, there is a good chance that the result will just > be an > elastic collision rather than a nuclear event. >
This suggests, then, that the same process that is leading to alpha decay (e.g., suppression of the Coulomb barrier) might also be increasing the cross section for alpha capture. Eric
