Re: poly: speeding up a star's burn rate

From: Damien R. Sullivan <phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu>
Date: Wed Jan 07 1998 - 12:25:44 PST

On Jan 7, 11:54am, carl feynman wrote:

> For stars heavier than the Sun, the main hydogen-burning reaction is
> catalyzed by the elements C, N, O and F. It doesn't matter which one you

What happens in a big star without CNOF? I suddenly had this image of the
early universe with lots of red dwarfs and Sols and nothing bigger, because
there was no CNOF. If the big stars needed CNOF to work but had to wait 10
billion years for Sols to make carbon and blow up and everyone else has to
wait for the big stars to blow up themselves before there are any heavy
elements, then that might put a more specific constraint on when life could
occur.

Tangentially, I've heard that dropping mass into a black hole gives you 50%
conversion. How does that work? And is it more efficient to fuse hydrogen
to iron and drop the iron than to simply drop the hydrogen?

-xx- GOU Learning From Others' Mistakes X-)

STEERING COMMITTEE REGRETFULLY MET WITHOUT YOU YESTERDAY STOP WE PASSED
MOTION OFFICIALLY WISHING YOU COMPLETE SPEEDY RECOVERY STOP VOTE WAS SIX
TO THREE STOP
Received on Wed Jan 7 20:15:38 1998

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