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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.
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 .
The CNO cycle (for carbon–nitrogen–oxygen; sometimes called Bethe–Weizsäcker cycle after Hans Albrecht Bethe and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker) is one of the two known sets of fusion reactions by which stars convert hydrogen to helium, the other being the proton–proton chain reaction (p–p cycle), which is more efficient at the Sun's ...
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.
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 ...
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]
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]
Carbon is the 15th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, and the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass, after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. Carbon's widespread abundance, its ability to form stable bonds with numerous other elements, and its unusual ability to form polymers at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth ...