At 03:54 PM 2/21/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote:
What about in the core of the sun? What mechanism operates there, if not brute force?
All that is necessary is that the temperature be great enough that some level of fusion occurs. It's enough that the Boltzmann tail allows enough nuclei to have enough energy to start tunneling, so, yes, practical fusion would not require the average energy to be "brute force." Nor that, even the fusion be taking place by nuclei that run up the hill and make it to the goal, based on the simplified model of a "barrier."
