BEC Fusion

In theory this Idea ought to work, but at this time I have no notion at all regarding how it could produce useful energy. Half-baked, therefore!

A Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) has some very unique properties. See link. One of the fundamental categories of particles is called "bosons" and they have the ability to occupy the same space at the same time. Photons are bosons, for example. The other main category, "fermions", cannot do this trick directly, but a pair of them together can act like a boson.

Ordinary electrons, protons, and neutrons are all fermions, but the helium atom is equivalent to a boson (it has a pair of protons, a pair of neutrons, and a pair of electrons). Fermions don't have to be paired up exactly to act as bosons; an ordinary hydrogen atom that consists of one proton and one electron can act like a boson.

I neglected to say that the CONDITIONS under which atoms can act like bosons are quite extreme; temperatures very close to Absolute Zero (like a millionth of a degree away from it) are required.

OK, the key fact is that WHEN some atoms manage to act like bosons, inside a Bose Einstein Condensate, then according to the descriptive Physics, some of those atoms should be occupying the same physical space as others of those atoms (that's why the word "condensate" is used).

So, let's start with a nice big batch of deuterium molecules. Each molecule has two protons, two neutrons, and two electrons, and thus should be able to act like a boson, if cooled enough. The experimenters who have made BECs have managed to keep their atoms in the gaseous state even while being cooled all the way down to the BEC point (and I'm talking about atoms that normally form a solid, like rubidium), so I don't have to pretend they can do this with deuterium molecules.

The process of cooling an initial quantity of gas, down to the BEC point, can be somewhat costly in terms of the gas that actually gets there. A significant fraction of the gas is sacrificed via "evaporative cooling", to carry heat energy away from the rest. But some fraction of the gas does eventually reach the BEC state, and if we start with a big enough batch, we can have a decent-sized Condensate to study.

The Question that caused this Idea to be written is, "Inside a BEC of atoms or molecules, what are the atomic nuclei doing???"

If whole atoms or molecules are occupying the same physical space, it logically follows that their nuclei should be rather closer together than normal. If those nuclei have a tendency to react with each other, such as deuteriums do have, then the result should be nuclear fusion.

The energy of a few fusion reactions would probably almost instantly destroy the Bose-Einstein Condensate, and immediately stop any more fusions from happening. So? The goal of this Idea would have been achieved!