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RE: The story of how our sun will become a massive diamond floating in the sky.
This is a very nice pots. Do you know that this helium fusion reactions you mentioned are also known as one of the bottlenecks that were forbidding the formation of heavier elements in the early days of the universe?
Merci @lemouth.
What do you mean? Are you talking about primordial nuclear synthesis?
In that case, it would be the high stability of the Helium nuclei that prevented heavier elements to form: Fusion of Hydrogen occurs at lower temperatures than that of Helium. So when Helium formed in the first place, the universe was already too cold to provoke heavier fusions. It had to wait for the birth of the first stars before fusion processes could start again...
Exactly. There are no stable nuclei with 5 and 8 nucleons, so that you cannot simply add a neutron or a proton on a nucleus already formed. Instead, you need to fuse helium to produce carbon :)