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What natural barrier tries to prevent two protons from combining?

Answer 1

The Coulomb barrier prevents two protons from combining.

Because protons have a positive charge and opposite charges repel one another (coulomb is the unit of charge), the charges of the protons tend to keep them apart.

In the centre of a star where temperatures and pressures are high enough, protons can be bought close enough for the strong nuclear force to bind them into the highly unstable helium 2 #""_2^2He#. Most of these nucleii decay back into two protons, but if the weak nuclear force comes into play one proton will decay into a neutron and a positron to create a stable deuterium nucleus #""_1^2H#.

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Answer 2

Levi Anderson

The natural barrier that prevents two protons from combining is called the Coulomb barrier or electrostatic barrier.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.