RESEARCH ARTICLES

Can water burn?

S.A. Rakityansky; J. Dicks

Department of Physics, University of South Africa, P.O. Box 392, Pretoria 0003, South Africa

ABSTRACT

We investigate the possibility of a spontaneous collapse of the nuclei constituting the water molecule. We show that, due to a practically exact agreement of the energy of the p + p + ¹⁶O threshold and a resonance state of the ¹⁸Ne nucleus, the probability of nuclear fusion involvingp+p+ ¹⁶O → ¹⁸Ne*(4.522, 1^-) in the rotationally excited H₂O molecule is significantly enhanced. The calculation of the fusion probability is performed using a scheme analogous to the linear combination of atomic orbitals (LCAO), well known in the theory of molecules.

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‡Author for corrresponcence. E-mail: rakitsa@science.unisa.ac.za