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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.
The Sun is a main-sequence star, and, as such, generates its energy by nuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. In its core, the Sun fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen and makes 616 million metric tons of helium each second. The fusion of lighter elements in stars releases energy and the mass that always accompanies it.
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]
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.
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 ...
Hydrogen is set to an abundance of 12 on this scale. The Sun's photosphere consists mostly of hydrogen and helium; the helium abundance varies between about 10.3 and 10.5 depending on the phase of the solar cycle; [13] carbon is 8.47, neon is 8.29, oxygen is 7.69 [14] and iron is estimated at 7.62. [15]
In this field, for historical reasons it is customary to quote the helium-4 fraction by mass, symbol Y, so that 25% helium-4 means that helium-4 atoms account for 25% of the mass, but less than 8% of the nuclei would be helium-4 nuclei. Other (trace) nuclei are usually expressed as number ratios to hydrogen.
In stars between 9 and 11 solar masses, the 16 O already produced by helium fusion in the previous stage of stellar evolution manages to survive the carbon-burning process pretty well, despite some of it being used up by capturing 4 He nuclei. [1] [8] So the result of carbon burning is a mixture mainly of oxygen, neon, sodium and magnesium. [3] [5]