Yea, yeah, "what does this have to do with Electrolysis, or hydrogen?" I hear you mumbling angrily to yourself.
Let me explain!
I propose that we take gravity out of the universe. yea, destroy the whole darned thing, and start over with giant lumps of hydrogen here and there. Just sitting there.. minding it's own business. rapidly cooling from the endless expansion that would take place, no light, no heat, no nothing. Just cold lumps of expanding atomic hydrogen.
If we suddenly introduce gravity into this the system, amazing things start to happen.
The hydrogen reverses it's expansion, it starts collecting into relatively dense spheres. As more and more hydrogen falls into these shrinking orbs, the pressures inside spikes to incomprehensible levels. You start seeing sparks of life emerge deep within this massive orb. Hydrogen fusing together.. releasing mass, and trying to throw it away as light of all things! From within, the cascade begins. Working it's way to the surface, this energy triggers fusion, releasing more energy, and so on, until there is nowhere else for this energy to go, but deep into space. The mother of all life support is born.
What does this imply exactly? What causes this 'spark of life' to occur?
The way I see it, there are two ways that this could go, maybe both.
1. Collectively, a 'lump' of hydrogen has a specific measure of heat when it is born. expansion and contraction dictate the measure of heat per a given volume. So, expanding will reduce the total available heat per cubic meter, while contracting will increase the available heat per cubic meter.
When the hydrogen vapor starts contracting, and the pressures start building, it's pushing all that ambient heat towards the center of the sphere where it is most dense.
could that be enough heat to spark fusion?
I'll come back to this.
2. The simple act of pushing atoms together is enough to cause fusion. Albeit, you need a LOT of pressure to do this, but I think this has actually been done in one of the many particle accelerators out there.. I Can't be certain, correct me if you know better please. Is there enough pressure in the center of a baby star to initiate this fusion from moderately warm hydrogen?
With the first example, I have but one problem... Heat does not stay put, it will escape it's material confines in the form of infrared light if it must, but it will escape just the same. Meaning, the lump of hydrogen will get cold, even if it's NOT expanding.
Does a hydrogen cloud collapse faster than the speed of light? I doubt it... so heat should have plenty of time to escape the cloud before compression reaches critical.. right?
This leaves me looking at gravity as the sole contributor to the existence of fusion. Without it, fusion could not naturally occur, nor could it be sustained for any significant length of time in the off chance that it DID occur as a freak coincidence.
Given that all energy is stored inside the atom as mass, and that fusion throws some of that energy/mass away during the creation of complex atoms. And that even more of that energy/mass is thrown away after the inevitable radioactive decay of all atoms. It seems that all matter in the universe can look forward to being light at some point in it's life.
Yet Gravity even has some influence on this lowest form of matter, light? Granted, if all matter where gone, gravity couldn't be a factor. But I'm not above thinking that matter can always exists, through an endless cycle of Mass->Light->mass(via gravitational singularity).
Imagine it, gravity, the mechanism which may keep the universe alive long after it's death, as a reborn entity. Perhaps this is what we hear, when we point our antennas into space, and listen to the hiss of distant microwaves. Primitive energy coming back home to good 'ol gravity.
Gravity seems to be the only thing in the known universe that can actively concentrate dilute (electromagnetic) energy into one place without an observable loss. I find that astonishing...
If... just IF, things really do work this way, And gravity IS the thing that weaves basic energy into mass... Something could be said about how hydrogen forms naturally from sub-atomic particles. Possibly the key to synthesizing H from the primitive electro soup of life? Idunno..
I'm full of it, I know... Something to think on at least. I just wanted to throw this on the table for discussion.