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Splitting Hairs, Splitting Atoms
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this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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New anxiety just dropped.
Its not possible to do by any metric. And besides, a chain reaction is needed. A single atom turned into pure kinetic energy wouldn't be noticeable at all.
Yes, and if I cut a mango, how many billions of atoms is that? So I'd recommend to cut the mango in increments of one angstrom to minimise the chances of a chain reaction happening.
\0. The force that keeps the nucleus together is much stronger than the force needed to break the inter-atom bonfs. (Blanking on the names right now. Strong and weak forces?)
Yeah, but what if the knife is really sharp?
The knife edge can't be smaller than an atoms width, so still no.
You say that until someone pulls the classic prank of swapping all your mango atoms with uranium-235.
Yeah and what if I squish the mango, thereby compressing the water and fusing the hydrogen into helium?
Unless you refined the mango to the point that was homoatomic, the other non-hydrogen atoms would act as moderators and prevent fusion from occurring.