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Once temperatures are lowered, out of every 16 nucleons (2 neutrons and 14 protons), 4 of these (25% of the total particles and total mass) combine quickly into one helium-4 nucleus. This produces one helium for every 12 hydrogens, resulting in a universe that is a little over 8% helium by number of atoms, and 25% helium by mass. One analogy is ...
The majority of these occur within stars, and the chain of those nuclear fusion processes are known as hydrogen burning (via the proton–proton chain or the CNO cycle), helium burning, carbon burning, neon burning, oxygen burning and silicon burning. These processes are able to create elements up to and including iron and nickel.
As a side effect of the process, some carbon nuclei fuse with additional helium to produce a stable isotope of oxygen and energy: 12 6 C + 4 2 He → 16 8 O + γ (+7.162 MeV) Nuclear fusion reactions of helium with hydrogen produces lithium-5, which also is highly unstable, and decays back into smaller nuclei with a half-life of 3.7 × 10 −22 s.
Supernova nucleosynthesis is the nucleosynthesis of chemical elements in supernova explosions.. In sufficiently massive stars, the nucleosynthesis by fusion of lighter elements into heavier ones occurs during sequential hydrostatic burning processes called helium burning, carbon burning, oxygen burning, and silicon burning, in which the byproducts of one nuclear fuel become, after ...
Therefore, the only stable nuclides created by the end of Big Bang nucleosynthesis are protium (single proton/hydrogen nucleus), deuterium, helium-3, helium-4, and lithium-7. [44] By mass, the resulting matter is about 75% hydrogen nuclei, 25% helium nuclei, and perhaps 10 −10 by mass of lithium-7.
In all cases, helium is fused to carbon via the triple-alpha process, i.e., three helium nuclei are transformed into carbon via 8 Be. [35]: 30 This can then form oxygen, neon, and heavier elements via the alpha process. In this way, the alpha process preferentially produces elements with even numbers of protons by the capture of helium nuclei.
Francis Aston had also recently shown that the mass of a helium atom was about 0.8% less than the mass of the four hydrogen atoms which would, combined, form a helium atom (according to the then-prevailing theory of atomic structure which held atomic weight to be the distinguishing property between elements; work by Henry Moseley and Antonius ...
Some embryos appear to continue to grow and eventually reach 5–10 Earth masses—the threshold value, which is necessary to begin accretion of the hydrogen–helium gas from the disk. [4] The accumulation of gas by the core is initially a slow process, which continues for several million years, but after the forming protoplanet reaches about ...