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Creation of elements beyond carbon through alpha process. The alpha process, also known as alpha capture or the alpha ladder, is one of two classes of nuclear fusion reactions by which stars convert helium into heavier elements. The other class is a cycle of reactions called the triple-alpha process, which consumes only helium, and produces ...
Nuclear fusion uses lighter elements, such as hydrogen and helium, which are in general more fusible; while the heavier elements, such as uranium, thorium and plutonium, are more fissionable. The extreme astrophysical event of a supernova can produce enough energy to fuse nuclei into elements heavier than iron.
The r-process can typically synthesize the heaviest four isotopes of every heavy element; of these, the heavier two are called r-only nuclei because they are created exclusively via the r-process. Abundance peaks for the r -process occur near mass numbers A = 82 (elements Se, Br, and Kr), A = 130 (elements Te, I, and Xe) and A = 196 (elements ...
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 ...
Neutron capture plays a significant role in the cosmic nucleosynthesis of heavy elements. In stars it can proceed in two ways: as a rapid process ( r-process ) or a slow process ( s-process ). [ 1 ] Nuclei of masses greater than 56 cannot be formed by exothermic thermonuclear reactions (i.e., by nuclear fusion ) but can be formed by neutron ...
The elements heavier than iron with origins in dying low-mass stars are typically those produced by the s-process, which is characterized by slow neutron diffusion and capture over long periods in such stars. A calculable model for creating the heavy isotopes from iron seed nuclei in a time-dependent manner was not provided until 1961. [7]
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Nuclear fusion reaction of two helium-4 nuclei produces beryllium-8, which is highly unstable, and decays back into smaller nuclei with a half-life of 8.19 × 10 −17 s, unless within that time a third alpha particle fuses with the beryllium-8 nucleus [3] to produce an excited resonance state of carbon-12, [4] called the Hoyle state, which ...