Cold CNO Cycles
Under typical conditions found in stellar plasmas, catalytic hydrogen burning by the CNO cycles is limited by proton captures. Specifically, the timescale for beta-decay of radioactive nuclei produced is faster than the timescale for fusion. Because of the long timescales involved, the cold CNO cycles convert hydrogen to helium slowly, allowing them to power stars in quiescent equilibrium for many years.
Read more about this topic: CNO Cycle
Famous quotes containing the words cold and/or cycles:
“Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“The stars which shone over Babylon and the stable in Bethlehem still shine as brightly over the Empire State Building and your front yard today. They perform their cycles with the same mathematical precision, and they will continue to affect each thing on earth, including man, as long as the earth exists.”
—Linda Goodman (b. 1929)