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RE: Supernova: Life Through Death
Cool post! Just a comment, to make one sentence clearer: electrons and protons are not really 'forming' neutrons. They are reacting and the reaction products are neutrons (and neutrinos). it is not like the neutron being a bound state of a proton and an electron :)
Maybe it would be useful to slightly rewrite this sentence? What do you think?
Thank you. And you are right,
i'm sorry for my english "forming" is maybe wrong word for this process, i just tried to explain it easier. But it is a product of reaction. Would be right to write:
It is actually a weak interaction process. There is a W-boson exchange between the electron and one of the up-quark constituting the proton. Since the W-boson is charged, the electron turned into a neutrino and the up-quark turned into a down-quark.
I wish I could draw a diagram... ;)
well, i think Beta decay deserves a separate post :)
Actually, beta decay works in the other way round :) Here, one inverts it, which is possible as one puts enough energy in the process.
β− decay yes, works in the other way round (neutron into a proton)
but β+ decay turns proton into a neutron. am i wrong?
This process of course differs from the electron capture. But according to scientific articles there is only two versions of the appearance of neutrons in the stars
β+ decay and electronic capture
I'm curious to know your opinion, because you are the man who is directly connected with science (as i think).
A proton cannot decay into a neutron as it is lighter. beta+ decay arise when we are discussing more complex atoms (as in the stars actually). The proton is in contrast stable.
Here, we are really having a reaction or a scattering process of an electron and a proton. It is the same interactions that arise as in a beta decay, but the initial and final state particles are different.
So for supernovas we can't say that it is beta decay in the full sense of this process, but in the same time it looks very similar - something like that?
It is just a matter of what a 'decay' means. Here it is not. A decay is one particle decaying into other particles. Here, we have two initial-state particles.
ok, so it's electronic capture, as i wrote in the begining :)
my mistake that I am not to the place mentioned the beta decay, sorry :)
No it is not electronic capture as the electron is converted into something else. When an ion or atom captures and electron, the electron nature is not altered. We have really here a scattering reaction: the electron turns into a neutrino via weak interactions.