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The subsequent nucleosynthesis of heavier elements (Z ≥ 6, carbon and heavier elements) requires the extreme temperatures and pressures found within stars and supernovae. These processes began as hydrogen and helium from the Big Bang collapsed into the first stars after about 500 million years.
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.
As a result, there is little mixing of fresh hydrogen into the core or fusion products outward. In higher-mass stars, the dominant energy production process is the CNO cycle, which is a catalytic cycle that uses nuclei of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen as intermediaries and in the end produces a helium nucleus as with the proton–proton chain. [22]
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 ...
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 ...
Illustration of a proton–proton chain, from hydrogen forming deuterium, helium-3, and regular helium-4. Nuclear transmutation is the conversion of one chemical element or an isotope into another chemical element. [1] Nuclear transmutation occurs in any process where the number of protons or neutrons in the nucleus of an atom is changed.
Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei (for example, nuclei of hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium), combine to form one or more atomic nuclei and neutrons. The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or absorption of energy .
When there are many helium atoms around, alkali metal ions can attract shells of helium atoms. Clusters can be formed from absorbing metal into helium droplets. The doped droplets are ionised with high speed electrons. For sodium clusters appear with the formula Na + He n with n from 1 to 26. Na + He is the most common, but Na + He 2 is very ...